The Pragmatics of Kéyĭ (“Can”) in Singapore Mandarin

Abstract

The object of study in this chapter is the pragmatics of the non-Standard Singapore Mandarin equivalent of the English can (可以; keyĭ). This chapter describes some of the speech acts it is associated with and represents some of these speech norms in the form of cultural scripts formulated using the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM). It is hoped that the cultural scripts will facilitate a better understanding of the cultural values underlying the use of this word. This chapter also contrasts some of these speech norms with their English counterparts to highlight their culture specificity and further examines examples from standard Mandarin to explain their cultural significance. This chapter additionally shows that speech acts are often culture specific, and speech acts specific to one language (in this case, English) cannot adequately describe speech acts specific to another (Singapore Mandarin, in this case). The proposed solution is NSM, a metalanguage that comprises semantic primes and universal combinations of the primes, which is also what the previous chapter advocates for the study of speech acts. As this chapter tries to show, NSM can clearly explain Singapore Mandarin speech acts associated with the word keyĭ and, in doing so, clarify the language-specific use of the Singapore Mandarin semantic equivalent of the English can.