A cartographic view on mood prominence and force in Mandarin

Abstract

AbstractThis work investigates the division of labor between mood and illocutionary force in syntax by examining three modal construals encoded by the speaker-oriented adverbzuìhǎo‘best’ (deontic, epistemic and evidential) in Mandarin, and accounts for a cluster of syntactic and pragmatic properties it is associated with. Very much in line with Tsai’s (2015a,2015band2015d) modal system in Mandarin, it is observed that each type ofzuìhǎocan co-occur with its matching modal auxiliary in the fashion ofCinque’s (1999)‘location-in-Spec’ hypothesis and encodes a certain type of illocutionary force. One persistent question is howzuìhǎosubstantiates illocutionary force in syntax, while its designated position is not situated in the licensing domain of ForceP. As far as the left periphery is concerned, this work argues for a conspiracy between syntax, semantics and pragmatics to ensure the success in activating the Bidirectional Agree relation between speech act, force and mood. We argue for a speech act layer (Sa*P) externally merging to CP (Speas and Tenny, 2003), whose head values the uninterpretable speech act feature [uSa] on Force0via the Bidirectional Agree to trigger its interface with the utterance content (CP). Meanwhile, followingKempchinsky’s (2009)idea, it is further argued in this work that Force0hosts the uninterpretable feature [uW] which has to be checked and valued by the modal construals ofzuìhǎoto determine the irrealis-realis mood. An immediate implication is that ForceP serves as a gateway to not only mood but also speech act at the interface. Several issues involved in dealing withzuìhǎoare discussed.