III. Semantics-Pragmatics Analysis of Polysemous Modal Verb
3.2 Modal Interpretation of Polysemous Modal Verb
3.2.1 YINGGAI 應該
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Epistemic (POSSIBILITY, PREDICTION, GENERIC) A WORLD-EVENT with no agent control inferred
Deontic (OBLIGATION, PERMISSION)
An AGENT-EVENT motivated by the obligated or permissive source
Dynamic (VOLITION, ABILITY)
An AGENT-EVENT motivated by the agent himself/herself
In what follows we will examine how these expressions are derived in Chinese
language via the interaction between linguistic meaning of each polysemous modal
verb and the propositional concept conveyed by sentences based on this
semantics-pragmatics interface approach.
3.2 Modal Interpretation of Polysemous Modal Verb
3.2.1 YINGGAI 應該應該應該 應該
Two modal interpretations assigned to YINGGAI are detected in corpus:
OBLIGATION and PREDICTION. Both of which are frequently used and thus are quite uncontroversial. See the following examples:
PREDICTION
(36) 北京方面真正在意的應該還是台灣獨立的趨向 (Sinica Corpus)
Beijing fangmian zenzheng zaiyi de yinggai haishi Taiwan Beijing side really care PRT possible still Taiwan duli de quxiang
independence of tendency
‘It is possible that what Beijing (government) really cares is the tendency of
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Taiwan independence.’
(37) 按照古典化學的理論應該已經無法找到原來化學物質 (Sinica Corpus)
anzhao gudian huaxue de lilun yinggai yijing wufa zhaodao according to classic chemistry POSS theory probable already NEG find out yuanlai huaxue wuzhi
original chemistry element
‘According to the theory of classic chemistry, it is probable that we never find the original chemical element.’
(38) 現場目擊民眾表示，起火點應該是在一樓後方 (Sinica Corpus)
xianchang muji minzhong biaoshi, qihuodian yinggai shi site witness people say start-fire-point probable is zai yi lou houfang
at first floor back
‘The witnesses indicated the fire probably started from the back of the first floor.’
‘The cares of Beijing toward the tendency of Taiwan independence’, ‘unable to
find original chemical element’ and ‘the starting point of fire from the back of first
floor’ in (36)-(38) respectively all demonstrate the future unverified WORLD-EVENT
for addressee’s assumption to judge whether these SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS are
true description of WORLD SITUATION.
OBLIGATION
(39) 制定人口政策應該注意人口結構跟人口分佈的變遷 (Sinica Corpus)
‧
‘The change of population structure and population distribution should be noticed when formulating population policy.’
(40) 易碎的玻璃製品，包裝時應該特別小心 (Sinica Corpus)
Yi sui de boli zhipin baozhuang shi yinggai tebie xiaoxin easy broken of glass product pack when should very careful ‘It should be very careful to pack glass-made products that are easily broken.’
(41) 接受外籍勞工的國家應該改善它的出入境管理辦法 (Sinica Corpus)
jieshou waiji laogong de guojia yinggai gaishan tade accept foreign labor of country should improve its churujing guanli-banfa
immigration regulation
‘The country which accepts foreign labors should improve its immigration regulation.’
In the context of (39), the increasing of population pressure serves as an
emergency condition to make the commentator (speaker) impose a necessity on
government for ensuring they will carefully formulate population policy. The contexts
in (40) and (41) also have similar situation in that the potential danger of
easily-broken glass products in (40) and the complicated problems of foreign labors in
(41) both provide the speakers with a reasonable condition in assigning a necessary
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
activity on the addressees, e.g. government in (39) and (41) and deliveryman in (40).
Accordingly, all the three utterances interpret unverified future AGENT-EVENTS not
motivated by agents. Therefore, PREDICTION and OBLIGATION are context-derived
meanings rather than semantic meaning encoded in lexeme.
The next question is what attitude the speakers possess toward these unverified
future event types when uttering sentences containing YINGGAI. Here we argue that
YINGGAI plays a role of which it first rejects the non-correspondence between
SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION so that the whole utterance interpretation derives that the SITUATION REPRESENTATION turns out to have highly
possible correspondence with WORLD SITUATION, in which it has similar performance
of MUST as Klinge (1993) illustrates in his data. For example, in the utterance of (36),
the speaker first rules out the negative logical conclusion of which “the proposition
‘the cares of Beijing government toward the tendency of Taiwan independence’ does
not exist” so that this leads to a positive logical conclusion in that such proposition is
a true description of actual statement of affairs. The whole processing model toward
utterances of sentences containing YINGGAI can be demonstrated as follows:
(42) Processing Model of Utterances Containing YINGGAI
POTENTIAL
WORLD SITUATION
~
WORLD SITUATION‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
3.2.2 KEYI 可以可以可以可以 and NENG 能能能能
According to the previous literatures (Lu, 1980; Liu et al, 1996; Huang, 1999),
KEYI and NENG can be interchangeable because they are usually semantically compatible in most conditions. In the traditional approach, KEYI and NENG are
illustrated to share the linguistic meaning of POSSIBILITY and PERMISSION while
ABILITY is also detected in NENG even though this kind of meaning occurs rarely in corpus data. In what follows we will argue the derivation of these modal
interpretations actually accords with our current framework of semantics-pragmatics
interface approach. Also we will investigate whether linguistic meaning of these two
modal verbs differentiates in POSSIBILITY and PERMISSION event type respectively.
POSSIBILITY
Such modal interpretation can be recognized in the utterances of sentences
encompassing NENG or KEYI. See the following examples:
(43) 消炎藥與溫水坐浴可以減輕症狀 (Sinica Corpus)
xiaoyanyao yu wen shui zuo yu keyi jianqing zhengzhuang antibiotic medicine and warm water sit shower can ease symptom
‘Antibiotic medicine and sitting shower with warm water can ease the symptom.’
(44) 筆者相信參加本會可以化解黨派對立 (Sinica Corpus)
bizhe xiangxin canjia benhui keyi huajie dangpai duili author believe join association can resolve partisan opposition ‘The author believes that joining this association can resolve partisan
‧
power support and coordination
‘Hopefully we can acquire the support and coordination of TZU-CHI in the future development of Chinese medicine.’
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
All the SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS described by ‘Mitigating the symptom by
antibiotic medicine and sitting shower with warm water’ in (43), ‘resolving partisan
opposition via joining this association’ in (44), ‘the co-existence of new and old style
and aesthetic feeling maintenance in a big city’ in (45), ‘the acquisition of support and
coordination of TZU-CHI in the future development of Chinese medicine’ in (46),
‘the establishment of harmony and warm relationship’ in (47) and ‘bring about team
work power by cooperation with each other closely’ in (48) constitute a testing ground
for addressee to examine whether the SITUATION REPRESENTATION of future
unverified WORLD-EVENT described by these PROPOSITIONAL CONTENTS corresponds
with the referential WORLD SITUATION. Again our alternative approach accounts for a
systematic exposition toward POSSIBILITY interpretation derived from either the
utterance implication of sentences containing KEYI or the utterance implication of
sentences containing NENG.
From these examples mentioned above, it seems that NENG and KEYI can
interchange in all these samples so that most native speakers conclude that NENG and
KEYI possess identical linguistic meaning from the initial observation. However,
previous literatures contend that there exists difference of lexical meaning encoded in
these two modal verbs. Consider the following sentences extracted from Huang’s
(1999) analysis in her study:
‧
(49) ‘This house could accomodate four people.’
a. 這間屋子可以住四個人
(50) ‘Wind can be used in generating electricity.’
a. 風可以發電
She claims that the sentence subjects in (49) and (50) are assigned a locative and an
instrumental case respectively thereby the difference is that the natural relationship
between subject and predicate in (49) is much closer than that in (50) so that this
observation might become a crucial point to differentiate NENG and KEYI.
Nevertheless, she does not make a clear definition in which to what extent these so
called ‘instrumental subject’ and ‘locative subject’ have the tight relationship with
their predicate. In fact, why KEYI and NENG are able to exchange in (49) but not in
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(50) can be explicated based on our context-derived approach. Actually, sentence (49)
goes through subject-object inversion in which ‘this house’ assigned a Locative case
moves to upper position while ‘four people’ assigned an Agent case is demoted to
lower position in syntactic structure. The original sentence is demonstrated as follows:
(51) 四個人可以住在這間房子裡
si-ge ren keyi zhu zai zhe-jian fangzili four-CL people can live in this-CL house ‘Four people can live in this house.’
Thus, applying the context-derived approach, when hearing the utterance of (49) and
(50), the situation type can be interpreted as either the future unverified
WORLD-EVENT of ‘four people living in this house’ or an intentional activity
motivated by the agent ‘four people’, i.e. AGENT-EVENT in (49) while it only specifies
the unverified WORLD-EVENT ‘the usage of wind in generating electricity’ in (50).
Therefore, it will derive both POSSIBILITY and PERMISSION modal implication in (49)
while it only acquires POSSIBILITY interpretation in (50). The analysis based on
context-derived approach discussed above implies that KEYIand NENG used in
sentences can interchange when an utterance can be generated into both
WORLD-EVENT and AGENT-EVENT whereas the usage of NENG is pragmatically questionable when an utterance only accounts for WORLD-EVENT. Our prediction can
be proved by another evidence. Consider the following examples extracted from Liu
‧
(52) ‘He can speak three foreign languages.’
a. 他可以說三種外語
(53) ‘I can finish this book today.’
a. 這本書我今天可以看完
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Liu et al (1996: 98-99)
Liu et al claims that KEYI denotes ‘the allowance of doing something under either
subjective or objective condition’. In our perspective, subjectivity and objectivity
infer AGENT-EVENT and WORLD-EVENT respectively. In the utterances of (52) and
(53), as the analysis toward (49) and (50), it can be interpreted as either future
unverified WORLD-EVENT ‘his ability to speak three foreign languages’ in (52) and
‘finishing this book today’ in (53) or the deliberate action motivated by the third
person singular and first person singular subject in both sentences, i.e. AGENT-EVENT.
However, in utterance of (54), the objective condition ‘It is not early’ serves the only
interpretation of WORLD-EVENT in which it does not denote the packing VOLITION of
first person plural subject but put the proposition ‘we start to pack’ in a future
unverified situation type. As a result, here we can conclude that KEYI and NENG can
interchange only if WORLD-EVENT and AGENT-EVENT are both logically accepted in
one utterance. This might be attributed to the preservation of NENG’s original
meaning in ancient Chinese in which it refers to a person who is knowledgeable and
possesses a strong ability at something so that even though it undergoes
grammaticalization in modern Chinese and develops into multiple meanings, it still
needs a context in which the situation type exhibits an agent who is endowed with an
innate and acquirable capacity or purposely performing an requested action to satisfy
‧
its inherent meaning as the following examples demonstrate:
(55) 一位臣子希望國君能做得更好 (Sinica Corpus)
‘He hopes his students can also choose their way of life through the uni-directional way.’
As we have mentioned in the beginning of this section, utterances of sentences
containing NENG and KEYI also exhibit PERMISSION reading. Examples are shown as
follows:
(58) 台灣的白領階級外國人都可以直接在台灣申請居留簽證 (Sinica Corpus)
Taiwan de bai-ling jieji waiguo-ren dou keyi zhijie zai Taiwan Taiwan of white-collar class foreigner all can directly in Taiwan
‧
‘All the white-collar foreigners in Taiwan can directly apply residence visa.’
(59) 取得開發執照和使用執照可以合法經營的只有八十三家 (Sinica Corpus)
qude kaifa-zhizhao han shiyong-zhizhao keyi hefa obtain development certification and usage certification can legally
jingying de zhi you ba-shi-san jia operated PRT only have eighty-three CL
‘Only eighty-three can legally operate by obtaining both development and usage certification.’
‘After performing psychotherapy forcibly, (the prisoner) can be released from the jail.’
(62) 進口菸酒須具備菸酒進口業許可執照才能進口 (Sinica Corpus)
jinkou yanjiu xu jubei yanjiu import alcohol & tobacco need possess alcohol & tobacco jinkouye xuke zhizhao cai neng jinkou
importer license only can import
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
‘Importing alcohol and tobacco has to be licensed.’
(63) 整個社會過關我們才能過 (Sinica Corpus)
zhengge shehui guoguan women cai neng guo whole society pass we only can pass
‘Only the whole society accepts it so that we can pass through.’
Among all these utterances, the partial propositional contents including ‘situating at
the manager occupation’ in (58), ‘obtaining development and usage certificate’ in (59),
‘living with parents or guardian’ in (60), ‘performing psychotherapy forcibly’ in (61),
‘owning alcohol and tobacco importer license’ in (62) and ‘the acceptance of society’
in (63) contribute a conditional circumstance for speaker to commit himself/herself to
ensuring that the addressee is able to intentionally perform these activities, including
‘applying residence visa’, ‘company operation’, ‘receiving benefit’, ‘releasing from
the jail’, ‘importing alcohol and tobacco’ and ‘pass through’ in (58)-(63) respectively,
only if these addressed conditions do hold. In other words, all the SITUATION
REPRESENTATIONS in these utterances can be interpreted as an AGENT-EVENT which is motivated by other specified conditional sources than the agent himself/herself.
The question is whether NENG and KEYI still perform differently in PERMISSION
situation type. Following Klinge’s (1993) analysis, we assume that NENG and KEYI
are analogous to the comparison between CAN and MAY. In terms of the
context-derived approach, like the nature of CAN and MAY, both NENG and KEYI do
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
not assure the SITUATION REPRESENTATION is a true description of WORLD
SITUATION. That is to say, these two modal verbs only specify the POTENTIAL of correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION. The
difference is that NENG always stay in a neutral position while KEYI involves an
‘either true or false’ implication. In other words, the linguistic semantics of a sentence
encompassing NENG does not hypothesize whether the SITUATION REPRESENTATION
eventually becomes a true description of WORLD SITUATION, i.e. it only indicates that
the correspondence and non-correspondence both serve a possible and valid position
whereas KEYI specifies speaker’s expectation in that such SITUATION
REPRESENTATION corresponds with WORLD SITUATION or not. Thus, in terms of the
AGENT-EVENT, an utterance of a sentence containing NENG does not convey the speaker’s commitment to anything happening at all but an utterance of a sentence
encompassing KEYI reports anticipation to existence or non-existence of an inferred
situation. Such assumption can be verified by the case in which KEYI and NENG are
stacked in one sentence of utterance. Consider the following example:
(64) ‘Although the condition of frontier is bad, we still (probably) can be (possibly) able to perform our ability much better.’
a. 邊疆雖然條件差，但 可以 能 更好地發揮才幹 (Sinica Corpus)
bianjian suiran tiaojian cha, dan keyi neng genghaode fahui caineng frontier though condition bad but can be able to better bring effort
‧
Hsin (2000: 263) observes that Chinese epistemic modals, like Southern Min, are
situated on the highest level in syntactic structure and then deontic modals are located
on lower position, i.e. epistemic always precedes deontic. This implies that the reason
why (64b) is semantically unacceptable is that KEYIinvolves more speaker’s attitude
than NENG so that KEYI acts as an operator to lead an expectation where ‘the
POSSIBILITY or ABILITY of brining efforts’ is truly a description of actual statement or not. Therefore, adopting form Leech’s (1987: 70-76) indication as addressed by
Klinge (1993), NENG and KEYI involve ‘theoretical possibility’ and ‘factual
possibility’ respectively in POSSIBILITY situation while they also implicate ‘having
permission’ and ‘giving permission’ respectively in PERMISSION situation. In general,
the processing model toward utterances of sentences containing NENG andKEYI is
illustrated as follows:
(65) Processing Model of Utterances Containing NENGandKEYI NENG
POTENTIAL
WORLD SITUATION
~WORLD SITUATION AND
‧
Based on the previous studies, the following examples illustrate three identified
modal expressions - ABILITY, PREDICTION and GENERIC - encoded in the utterances
of sentences encompassing HUI:
It is not controversial that the SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS described by the
PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT ‘be able to speak German and Chinese’ and ‘be able to POTENTIAL
WORLD SITUATION
~WORLD SITUATION OR
‧
evaluate the value of paintings’ in (66) and (67) respectively are interpreted as
AGENT-EVENT in which the third person plural subject ‘people’ in (66) and third person subject ‘Huiru’ in (67) are endowed by nature with these intrinsic capacities
motivated by the agents themselves.
PREDICTION
‘Water depth will reach six to ten meters and it is estimated that six million people will be drowned.’
(69) 開設境外航運中心後，相信會吸引一些國際性的航運公司 (Sinica Corpus) kaishe jingwai hangyun zhongxin hou, xiangxin hui xiyin yixie
establish offshore shipping center after believe will attract several guojixing de hangyun gongsi
international of shipping company
‘After establishing the offshore shipping center, (we) believe it will attract several international shipping companies.’
(70) 天氣要等到明天白天以後才會開始回升 (Sinica Corpus)
tianqui yao dengdao mingtian baitian yihou cai hui kaishi huisheng weather will until tomorrow day after only will start rise
‘(Temperature of) weather will rise tomorrow.’
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
GENERIC
(71) 世界著名的學術刊物，本身會有一套書目引用標準 (Sinica Corpus)
shijie zhuming de xueshu kanwu, benshen hui you yi-tao shumu world famous of academic journal itself will have one-CL reference
yinyong biaozhun citation criteria
‘A famous journal in the world will possess its own criteria of reference citation.’
(72) 烏魚都會在寒流季節出來活動 (Sinica Corpus)
wuyu dou hui zai hanliu jijie chulai huodong mullet all will in cold season out move ‘Mullets will move around in cold season.’
(73) 身體內有火會讓體內的水份蒸發 (Sinica Corpus)
shenti nei you huo hui rang ti-nei de shuifen zenfa body inside have heat will make body-inside of water evaporate ‘The internal heat will evaporate water inside the body.’
From the utterances of (68)-(73), the SITUATION REPRESENTATIONS described by
‘six hundred thousand people being drowned’, ‘attracting international shipping
companies’, ‘temperature rising’, ‘a famous journal in the world possessing criteria of
reference citation’, ‘Mullets moving around in cold season’ and ‘The internal heat
evaporating water inside the body’ in these examples respectively, like we have
illustrated in the previous sections, provide the addressees with a testing
WORLD-EVENT to examine whether they are corresponding to WORLD SITUATION.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Therefore, in terms of WORLD-EVENT, three situation types are identified in the
present study: POSSIBILITY, PREDICTION and GENERIC. Here we tend to define their
characteristic as follows:
POSSIBILITY
A future unverified WORLD-EVENT which has either correspondence or non-correspondence to WORLD-SITUATION
PREDICTION
A future unverified WORLD-EVENT which has highly possible correspondence to WORLD-SITUATION
GENERIC
A verified and existing WORLD-EVENT which depicts a true description of WORLD-SITUATION
Back to the speaker’s judgment toward the SITUATION REPRESENTATION described
by PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT when using HUI in the utterance, here we still follow
Klinge’s (1993) argument on WILL and contend that HUI signifies the assurance of
which the SITUATION REPRESENTATION is surely a true description of WORLD
SITUATION. Processing model toward utterances containing HUI is depicted as
follows:
(74) Processing Model of Utterances Containing HUI
POTENTIAL
WORLD SITUATION
~WORLD SITUATION
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
3.2.4 YAO 要要要要
In general, three modal interpretations implicated from the utterances of sentences
containing YAO are detected: VOLITION, OBLIGATION and PREDICTION. See the
following examples:
VOLITION
(75) 我們要送你很多牛，很多羊，給你最好的帳蓬 (Sinica Corpus)
women yao song ni henduo niu, henduo yang, gei ni zuihao de zhangpeng we want give you many cow many sheep give you best of tent ‘We want to give you many cows, sheep and the best tent.’
(76) 他要將這種感情寫在歌裡 (Sinica Corpus)
ta yao jiang zhezhong ganqing xie zai ge li he want with this-kind emotion describe in song within ‘He want to describe this kind of emotion within his song.’
Following context-derived approach, the intentional activities ‘giving many cows,
sheep and the best tent’ in (75) and ‘describing this kind of emotion within the song’
in (76) are deliberately performed by first person plural subject and third person
singular subject of both examples respectively, that is, these SITUATION
REPRESENTATIONS imply an AGENT-EVENT motivated by the agent himself/herself.
OBLIGATION
(77) 憲法規定總統提名行政院長要經立法院同意 (Sinica Corpus)
xianfa guiding zongtong timing xingzhengyuanzhang yao
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
constitution stipulate president nominate premier have to jing lifayuan tongyi
through Legislative Yuan approve
‘Constitution stipulates that the premier nominated by president has to be approved by Legislative Yuan.’
‘Constitution stipulates that the premier nominated by president has to be approved by Legislative Yuan.’