Abstract
This paper addresses the central question of whether Mandarin Chinese (MC) is a canonical truth-based language, a language that is expected to express the speaker's disagreement to a negative proposition by means of a negative particle followed by a positive sentence. Eight native speakers of MC participated in an oral Discourse Completion Task that elicited rejecting responses to negative assertions/questions and broad focus statements (control condition). Results show that MC speakers convey reject by relying on a combination of lexico-syntactic strategies (e.g., negative particles such as bù, méi(yǒu), and positive sentences) together with prosodic (e.g., mean pitch) and gestural strategies (mainly, the use of head nods). Importantly, the use of a negative particle, which was the expected outcome in truth-based languages, only appeared in 52% of the rejecting answers. This system puts into question the macroparametric division between truth-based and polarity-based languages and calls for a more general view of the instantiation of a reject speech act that integrates lexical and syntactic strategies with prosodic and gestural strategies.
Highlights
The parametric division between truth-based and polarity-based languages refers to a classification of answering systems to negative polar questions
We present the results of the set of grammatical, prosodic and gesture strategies used by Mandarin Chinese (MC) native speakers at the time of rejecting negative discourse accessible propositions in contrast to expressing broad focus statements
The results provided show that MC speakers use a specific set of optional lexico-syntactic strategies to reject negative propositions, as well as an increase in mean pitch and a more frequent use of head nod and head shake movements
Summary
The parametric division between truth-based and polarity-based languages refers to a classification of answering systems to negative polar questions. A polar question is one to which the expected answer is the equivalent to yes and no (they are referred to as yes-no questions) (Dryer, 2013). Polar questions can be either positive or negative. Negative questions are non-neutral or biased questions (Reese, 2006): “the questioner is biased either toward a positive sentence answer based on the original belief or a negative sentence answer based on the subsequent doubt” (Jones, 1999:8). If the question has a bias the responder can either accept or reject the bias of the question. If the question has a negative bias, a negative sentence answer accepts the bias, but a positive sentence answer counters it. Negative questions are used with a negative bias and convey a negative sentence as the most relevant answer
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