Abstract
This paper investigates the elasticity of the pragmatic particlebain Mandarin Chinese, based on TV discussion data. It provides refreshing theoretic explanations ofba: the elasticity manifests through fluidity and stretchability ofba’s meanings and functions, and its strategic use.Bahas the general meaning of ‘a change of tone in an utterance’, which can trigger three pragmatic meanings (and functions) in context: mitigating (most frequent), boosting (least frequent) and soothing. These three meanings stretch upwards (boosting), downwards (mitigating) or sidewise (soothing) to serve the needs of communication.Bais sentence-type and text-type specific; the clustershibashows the overlapping characteristics of the embedded declarative and interrogative forms.
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