The Interpersonal Interactive Function of Modal Particle <i>ne</i>

Abstract

Both ne sentences in interrogative utterances and declarative utterances give prominence to the speaker’s cognitive or emotional state of a certain propositional event to seek the consensus with listener in cognition and to build communication cooperation between them. At the same time, this kind of discourse communication is based on the assumption that the hearer should hold the same cognitive and emotional state as the speaker on the relevant propositional events. Ne induces this pragmatic presupposition and expresses the speaker’s communicative intention in the process of this discourse communication.