IV. Modal Co-occurrence in Mandarin Chinese
4.2 Modal Co-occurrence within Semantics-Pragmatics Interface Approach
4.2.2 Data Distribution
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
this has the same finding with descriptive-oriented approach, the advantage of our
alternative analysis is that we ensure all the five polysemous modal verbs in Mandarin
Chinese are regarded as an unambiguous and consistent element with their intrinsic
lexical semantics because the three categories of modality - epistemic, deontic and
dynamic - where descriptive-oriented approach argues that modals encode these three
modal interpretations are actually derived from our assumptions described by
different SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS, i.e. WORLD-EVENT (POSSIBILITY,
PREDICTION and GENERIC) vs. AGENT-EVENT (OBLIGATION, PERMISSION, VOLITION,
ABILITY) about referential WORLD SITUATION. Thus, we assume that the STRENGTH of prediction to the POTENTIAL correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION
and WORLD SITUATION represented by modal verbs plays an important role in the
ordering restriction in multiple-modal construction. The more STRENGTH about the
outcome of correspondence/non-correspondence the modal verb possesses, the higher
position in multiple-modal construction it occupies. In what follows, we will see how
the examples below found in the corpus data accord with our prediction.
4.2.2 Data Distribution
4.2.2.1 The Co-occurrence of Different Category
I. The Co-occurrence with YINGGAI
First, according to our hypothesis in the last section, YINGGAI can adjoin all the
‧
other four polysemous modal verbs. See the following examples:
YINGGAI + NENG
(99) 鳥林投居民要求合理，政府 應該 都 能 接受 (GigaWord Corpus)
Niaolintou jumin yaoqiu heli, zhengfu yinggai Niaolntou resident requirement reasonable government probably dou neng jieshou
all can accept
‘The requests of the residents in Niaolintou are reasonable so the government should probably be able to accept it all.
(100) 大學法部分條文修正案 應該 能 在上午順利通過 (GigaWord Corpus)
Daxuefa bufen tiaowen xiuzhengan yinggai neng zai University Law partial clause amendment propably can in shangwu shunli tongguo
morning successfully pass
‘The partial amendment of University Law probably will successfully be able to pass in the morning.’
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
In the above examples, NENG first has the SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS of
WORLD-EVENT as its scope to denote the correspondence or non-correspondence to be verified by referential WORLD SITUATION. Next, YINGGAI occupies before NENG to
reject the possibility of non-correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION
and referential WORLD SITUATION in ensuring this unverified WORLD-EVENT is the
true description of WORLD SITUATION. As we have discussed previously, NENG only
holds the relation between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION on
the neutral position. In other words, it has the lowest STRENGTH of prediction to the
potential correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD
SITUATION so that it always occurs after YINGGAI which has the strongest prediction to the potential correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD
SITUATION. For instance, the proposition ‘the government accepting all requirements of Niaolintou residents’ in (99) describes the SITUATION REPRESENTATION of future
unverified WORLD-EVENT. NENG here first denotes both possibilities of the
government accepting or not accepting the requests of Niaolintou residents. Then
YINGGAI rules out the possibility of which the government won’t accept the residents’
requests so that it specifies the proposition ‘the government accepts all the requests of
Niaolintou residents’ eventually truly describes the referential WORLD SITUATION. The
rest two utterances of (100) and (101) also accord with this mechanism. On the other
‧
hand, the inferential process of utterances encompassing YINGGAI + KEYI also has the
same mechanism with YINGGAI + NENG. See the following examples:
YINGGAI + KEYI
‘Buying the excessively-produced vegetable of each place probably can gradually increase the price of vegetable.’
(103) 相信明年經濟成長率 應該 還是 可以 保持在百分之六左右 be kept at around six percents.’
(104) 建立貨物直航構想 應該 可以 避免兩岸主權爭議 (GigaWord Corpus)
jianli huowu zhihang gouxiang yinggai keyi bimian liangan establish goods direct delivery idea probably can avoid both side zhuquan zhengyi
sovereignty dispute
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
‘The idea of establishing direct delivery of goods between the two sides (of Taiwan and Mainland China) should be able to avoid sovereignty dispute.’
Although KEYI represents the speaker’s expectation in that the SITUATION
REPRESENTATION corresponds with WORLD SITUATION or not, it still only specifies the POTENTIAL of correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD
SITUATION. That is to say, KEYI still has lower STRENGTH of prediction than YINGGAI. Thus, KEYI, like NENG, always occurs after YINGGAI in the utterance. Hence, taking
the utterance of (102) for instance, KEYI first has the SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS
of WORLD-EVENT described by ‘buying the excessively-produced vegetable of each
place gradually increasing the price of vegetable’ as their scope to denote the
correspondence or non-correspondence to be verified by referential WORLD
SITUATION and then YINGGAI occupies the higher position and thereby immediately rejects the possibility of non-correspondence to ensure this SITUATION
REPRESENTATION is the true description of WORLD SITUATION. The same mechanism can also apply in the utterances of (103) and (104). Next, we will see the utterances
encompassing YINGGAI + HUI and YINGGAI + YAO.
YINGGAI + HUI
(105) 未來政府在調整薪資時 應該 會 考慮到企業界的生產成本
(GigaWord Corpus) weilai zhengfu zai tiaozheng xinzi shi yinggai hui kaoludao qiyeje
‧
future government on adjust salary when probably will think about industry de shengchan chengben
of production cost
‘In the future, it is very likely that the government will take the production costs of industry into consideration when adjusting salary scales.’
(106) 經濟部認為下半年經濟情勢 應該 會 較樂觀 (GigaWord Corpus)
Jingjibu renwei xiabannian jingji-qingshi Ministry of Economic Affairs think second half year economic situation yinggai hui jiao leguan
probably will more positive
‘Ministry of Economic Affairs thinks that the economic situation probably will be more positive in the second half of the year.’
(107) 美國方面只要達到目的 應該 會 立刻停止軍事攻擊行動
(GigaWord Corpus) Meiguo fangmian zhiyao dadao mudi yinggai hui like
America side as long as achieve destination probably will immediately tingzhi junshi gongji xingdong
stop military attack action
‘In the perspective of America (government), as long as they achieve their goal, military attack is very likely to be immediately stopped.’
As we have discussed in the last chapter, the speaker uses HUI to directly predict the
highly possible correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD
SITUATION. Nevertheless, it still leaves the chance that the SITUATION
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
REPRESENTATION of unverified WORLD-EVENT eventually may not truly describe the actual statement of affairs. Thus, even though HUI has higher assurance than NENG
and KEYI, HUI still has lower STRENGTH of prediction than YINGGAI so that HUI
generally follows after YINGGAI and precedes NENG and KEYI in one utterance. For
example, in Sentence (105), the SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS of WORLD-EVENT
described by ‘the government thinking about the production cost of industry when
adjusting salary’ is first specified by HUI to denote the highly possible
correspondence between this unverified WORLD-EVENT and referential WORLD
SITUATION. Then YINGGAI occupies the higher position to further strengthen the only outcome of which ‘the government really thinks about the production cost of industry
when adjusting salary structure’ by ruling out the possibility of non-correspondence.
The utterances of (106) and (107) also illustrate the same inferential process.
YINGGAI + YAO
(108) 政府在限制大陸勞工來台 應該 要 比外籍勞工的引進更嚴格
(GigaWord Corpus) zhengfu zai xianzhi dalu laogong lai tai yinggai yao bi waiji
government on limit China labor come Taiwan must should than foreign laogong de yinjing geng yange
labor of introduction more strict
‘In the perspective of government’s action, the introduction of China labors into Taiwan should be much stricter than that of foreign labors.’
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(109) 縣警局也認為 應該 要 有妥善的安全管理辦法 (GigaWord Corpus)
xian jingju ye renwei yinggai yao you tuoshan de anquan county police office also think must should have proper of security guanli banfa
management regulation
‘The county police office also thinks that they should possess a proper security management regulation.’
(110) 教育局呼籲家長 應該 要 慎選立案補習班 (GigaWord Corpus)
Jiaoyuju huyu jiazhang yinggai yao shen xuan Department of Education request parents must should carefully choose lian buxiban
registered educational institute
‘Department of Education request that parents should carefully choose registered educational institute.’
As we have described in Section 3.2.4, YAO possesses the identical function with HUI
in which it also denotes the assertion about the highly possible correspondence
between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION but YAO prefers to
induce an interpretation of AGENT-EVENT. Thus, taking (108) for instance, YAO at first
grants an OBLIGATION situation, i.e. an AGENT-EVENT not motivated by agent
himself/herself, on the specified subject ‘government’ to ensure this specified subject
will intentionally perform the obligated actions ‘severely controlling the introduction
of China labors into Taiwan’. Then YINGGAI here is used to ensure that this
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
AGENT-EVENT is the only outcome and should be realized in real WORLD SITUATION. The rest of two examples of (109) and (110) also go through the same process in
which they are first granted as an obligated AGENT-EVENT by YAO and further assured
to be true in the real WORLD-SITUATION by YINGGAI. II. The Co-occurrence of HUI and YAO
Our hypothesis also predicts HUI and YAO can both adjoin KEYI and NENG
respectively. First, we will see the utterances containing HUI + NENG and HUI + KEYI
as the following examples demonstrate:
HUI + NENG
(111) 李遠哲期待陳水扁當選總統 會 能 掃除黑金 (GigaWord Corpus)
Li Yuan-Zhe qidai Chen Shui-Bian dangxuan zongtong hui neng Yuan-Zhe Li expect Shui-Bian Chen elected president will can saochu heijin
eliminate corruption
‘Yuan-Zhe Li expects that Shui-Bian Chen will be able to eliminate corruption when he is elected to be the president.’
(112) 中央權力下放落實地方自治的情形勢必 會 更 能 反映符合民意
(GigaWord Corpus) zhongyang quanli xiafang luoshi defang zizhi de qingxing
Central power decentralize implement local autonomy of situation shibi hui geng neng fanying fuhe minyi
certain will more can reflect match public opinion
‧
implementation certainly will be able to match public opinion.’(113) 相信總有一天 會 能 找到巴金森氏症的解藥 (GigaWord Corpus) of this year will soon be confirmed.’
(115) 從現在到2005年之間，(應)該 會 可以 成功飼育五十至七十隻貓熊
In these utterances above, as we have discussed previously, KEYI and NENG at first
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
allow the co-existence of correspondence and non-correspondence between the
WORLD SITUATION and SITUATION REPRESENTATION of WORLD-EVENT. Then HUI directly denotes the only outcome of which this SITUATION REPRESENTATION truly
describes the actual statement of affairs. For instance, in utterances (111) and (114),
NENG and KEYI hold the unverified WORLD-EVENTS ‘Shui-Bian Chen eliminating
corruption when he is elected to be the president’ in (111) and ‘ARATS vice-president
Shu-Bei Tang coming to Taiwan in the end of this year being confirmed’ in (114)
respectively on the neutral position of which they can be or cannot be a true
description of referential WORLD SITUATION. Then HUI directly specifies these
SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS have highly possible correspondence with real WORLD
SITUATION. Next, we will see the utterances encompassing YAO + NENG and YAO + KEYI.
YAO + NENG
(116) 未來的中央研究院院長 要 能 全心投入在台灣發展 (GigaWord Corpus) weilai de Zhongyangyanjiuyuan yuanzhang yao neng quanxin
future of Academia Sinica president should can fully touru zai Taiwan fazhan
concentrate on Taiwan develop
‘The future president of Academia Sinica should be able to fully concentrate on the development of Taiwan.’
(117) 訂定中華電信公司章程時一定 要 能 代表國家的利益
‧
Formulate Chunghwa Telecom company regulation when necessarily yao neng daibiao guojia de liyi
should can represent nation of interest
‘When formulating the regulation of Chunghwa Telecom, the content (of the regulation) should be able to represent national interest.’
(118) 司法人員務必 要 能 瞭解社會發展趨勢 (GigaWord Corpus)
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
‘Roads should be able to be developed before we start to plan.’
(121) 有關的管教行為在依法上或在措施上都 要 可以 有所依據
(GigaWord Corpus) youguan-de guanjiao xingwei zai-yifahang huo zai-cuoshi-shang
relevant discipline behavior on the law or on the measure dou yao keyi yousuoyiju
all should can hold basis
‘The relevant discipline behavior should be able to hold basis whenever on the laws or measures.’
In the utterances of (116), (118) and (119), because the animate subjects ‘the
president of Academia Sinica’, ‘judicial officer’ and ‘the leader’ in these examples
respectively are explicitly addressed so that YAO here brings about an AGENT-EVENT
in which the agent is motivated by other unspecified obligated source rather than
agent himself. Therefore, the role of NENG and KEYI in these cases which originally
allow both correspondence and non-correspondence is relatively weak. Regarding the
other cases in (117), (120) and (121), like the situation of HUI + KEYI and HUI +
NENG, NENG and KEYI first hold both correspondence and non-correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION of WORLD-EVENT and real WORLD SITUATION
then YAO ensures only correspondence exists.
4.2.2.2 The Co-occurrence within Identical Category
In the previous sections, we have detected a severe ordering restriction in Chinese
‧
modal co-occurrence: YINGGAI as the first level holds on the top position then YAO
and HUI as the second level occupy after YINGGAI and KEYI and NENG as the third
level are located at last position. The question is how we decide the ordering of
co-occurrence inside each level. No doubt the first level only encompasses one modal
verb YINGGAI so it has no need to discuss. So we will first consider the following
utterances containing YAO and HUI:
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
all should can CPR
‘From third grade of junior high school to senior high school everyone should be able to operate CPR.’
Among all these utterances above, YAO and HUI both directly specify the highly
possible correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS and referential
WORLD SITUATION. However, YAO specially brings about an OBLIGATION
interpretation, i.e. an AGENT-EVENT motivated by unspecified obligated sources other
than the subject himself/herself. For instance, in Sentence (122), both YAO and HUI
are used to assure the proposition ‘the staffs of warehouse management being able to
search for computer information’ is realized as an actual statement of situation. The
difference is that YAO here generates an OBLIGATION AGENT-EVENT motivated by the
unspecified obligated source, e.g. company policy. Hence, the staffs of warehouse
management in this utterance are addressed to necessarily perform the action of
searching for computer information. In addition, we also find that the other two
examples of (123) and (124) and other utterances containing YAO + HUI found in
corpus all accord with the analysis mentioned above. On the other hand, although the
numbers of HUI + YAO combination (11 entries) found in corpus are much less than
YAO + HUI (213 entries), the former combination is still acceptable for most native speakers. Consider the following examples:
HUI + YAO
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(125) 他多少小姐都看不上眼了，還 會 要 娶妳這個殘花敗柳？(Sinica Corpus) ta duoshao xiaojie dou kan-bu-shang-yan le hai hui yao
he many lady all spurn PRT still will can qu ni zheige can-hua-bai-liu
marry you such fallen woman
‘He has spurned so many ladies. How is it possible that he will marry such a fallen woman like you?’
(126) 他既不帥又不有錢，誰 會 要 嫁給他阿？ (Google)
ta ji bu shuai you bu you-qian shei hui yao jia gei ta a he both not handsome and not rich who will want marry to him PRT ‘He is neither handsome nor rich. Who will possibly marry him?’
Following our framework in the present study, YAO and HUI here again denote the
highly possible correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS and
referential WORLD SITUATION. Nevertheless, unlike (122)-(124), HUI in the above
examples explicitly yields a PREDICTION reading, i.e. a WORLD-EVENT. For instance,
in Sentence (125), although the sentence type is interrogative, the speaker uses HUI
and YAO to indirectly assure that the proposition ‘he marries such a fallen woman like
you’ is not realized in the real world. The difference is that HUI has its scope over
YAO to generate a PREDICTION WORLD-EVENT. Sentence (126) also accords with the
same analysis.
Next, the utterances containing KEYI and NENG are demonstrated as follows:
‧
In the utterances (127) and (128), KEYI and NENG both indicate the co-existence of
correspondence and non-correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and
real WORLD SITUATION but KEYI further denotes speaker’s anticipation to existence or
non-existence of an inferred situation in the real world. For example, in Sentence
(127), both KEYI and NENG allow the proposition ‘I am able to make you have
something to write’ to be the case or not to be the case in the real world. With the use
of KEYI, it adds the speaker’s own expectation in that this proposition (SITUATION
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
REPRESENTATION) truly describes the actual statement of the situation (WORLD
SITUATION) or not. Besides, among the rest of utterances containing KEYI and NENG found in corpus, we find that KEYI generally precedes NENG.
To sum up, based on the discussion in the last chapter, we have indicated that HUI
and YAO involve the difference in which HUI is unspecified about the choice between
WORLD-EVENT and AGENT-EVENT while YAO prefers to induce an interpretation of
AGENT-EVENT. Therefore, according to our observation above, the whole situation type of the utterance is usually interpreted as a WORLD-EVENT if HUI occurs before
YAO while it is regarded as an AGENT-EVENT if YAO occurs before HUI. In other words,
HUI and YAO can interchange in the second level but the ordering of their scope will
determine whether the SITUATION REPRESENTATION is interpreted as a WORLD-EVENT
or an AGENT-EVENT. On the other hand, we also have described that an utterance of a
sentence containing NENG does not convey the speaker’s commitment to anything
happening at all while an utterance of a sentence encompassing KEYI reports
anticipation to existence or non-existence of an inferred situation. This observation
also implies that KEYI involves more speaker’s attitude than NENG. Additionally, as
we have told in the earlier discussion of NENG and KEYI, Hsin (2000) observes that
Chinese epistemic modals which involve more speaker’s attitude always have higher
position than deontic modals in the syntactic structure. In other words, the more
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
speaker’s attitude the modal involves, the higher position it occupies. As a result, we
may conclude that KEYI generally precedes NENG in the third level.