An evolutionary approach to semasiological change: Overt influence attempts through the development of the Mandarin 吧-ba particle

Abstract

This paper focuses on the pragmatics of overt influence attempts (cf. Reich 2011, 2012; Tantucci 2016a) and their cognitive relationship with semasiological change. As a case study, the present analysis is centred on the recent history of the Mandarin 吧-ba sentence-final particle, starting from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) up to its present day usage. Corpus-based data from the CCL Peking corpus highlight a progressive shift from an original directive usage towards a later assertive employment. In the latter case, speaker/writer 'invites' addressee/reader to agree with his/her statement on the basis of what is 'socially' or 'interpersonally' expected to be true/sensible. The cooperatively 'expected action' originally prompted by the particle, will then turn into cooperatively 'expected certainty' in later usages. From an evolutionary-psychological angle, at every stage of the cline it emerges the speaker/writer's consistent attempt to exert social influence on addressee/reader in the form of an 'interested' co-act proposal (cf. Reich 2011, Tantucci 2016b).

A mitigator in Mandarin: the sentence-final particleba(吧)

“…Nevertheless, the substantial differences are still revealing, especially the overwhelmingly higher frequency of ba in directives, which shows that its directive use, not its declarative use, is basic and primary. This is also confirmed by diachronic research conducted by Tantucci (2017), who points out that in recent history ba has witnessed a gradual shift from the directive use to the declarative use. This reveals that the use of the mitigator in directives is the original one and has diachronically expanded to declaratives, functioning to reduce the assertive force of the declarative.…”

“…If ba were a modal marker of uncertainty (Hu 1981: 416, Lu 1984: 334, Chu 1998: 139, Zhou 2009: 16-22, Zhao and Sun 2015, then a speaker could use ba to show he/she is uncertain about what he/she is asserting. However, ba can occur in sentences in which the speaker displays a high degree of confidence in the truth of the statement (Tantucci 2017). In (10), the village head is highly confident that Chen Yue-Qing is reluctant to sell the orchard because no one would sell something that is very profitable.…”

Diachronic change of rapport orientation and sentence-periphery in Mandarin

“…They acknowledge a clear overlap with modality with a special focus on ‘speaker or writer’s attitude or [that] may relate to certainty or obligation or desirability or any of a number of other sets of values’ (Hunston and Thompson, 2000: 5). Importantly, evaluative speech acts often intersect with modal elements which can be performative (involving the speaker’s own, subjective evaluation) or descriptive (reporting the epistemic qualification of a state of affair, for example, Aijmer, 2016; Nuyts and van der Auwera, 2016; Tantucci, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a, 2017a). Most modal subtypes often count as attitudinal categories, namely, involving the extent to which the assessor can commit him/herself to the state of affairs (e.g.…”

“…Overtly codified attempts of RM indicate when the speaker finds necessary to encode his or her awareness of the addressee as a distinctive effort or ‘surplus’ over mere propositional meaning and ‘politic’ behaviour (e.g. Culpeper, 2011; Gouldner, 1960; Kasper, 1990; Tantucci, 2016b, 2017a, 2017b, 2018; Tantucci et al, 2018; Tantucci and Wang, 2018; Watts, 2003), for example, Actually, I’m tired now vs I’m tired now (cf. Tantucci, 2017b; Traugott and Dasher, 2002 on the intersubjective functions of the discourse markers actually ).…”

Entrenchment inhibition: Constructional change and repetitive behaviour can be in competition with large-scale “recompositional” creativity

“…Bybee 2010, and conventionalization (i.a. Traugott and Dasher 2002;Terkourafi 2015;Tantucci 2013Tantucci , 2017aTantucci , 2017b) with a special emphasis given to the diachronic relationship between repetition and 'bottom-up' constructional abstraction (i.e. Hilpert 2015).…”