IV. Modal Co-occurrence in Mandarin Chinese
4.2 Modal Co-occurrence within Semantics-Pragmatics Interface Approach
4.2.1 Hypothesis
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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
modal verb or the elements beyond sentence level, i.e. contextual information, as
revealed in sentences (92c) and (92d). Additionally, we cannot also generate all
variants of multiple-modal expressions of identical modal co-occurrence under the
framework of traditional descriptive-oriented approach as demonstrated in sentences
(92a) and (92b).
4.2 Modal co-occurrence within Semantics-Pragmatics Interface Approach
4.2.1 Hypothesis
Since the discussion so far suggests that modal interpretation is determined by the
inference process in which each polysemous modal verb possesses different core
meaning in their lexical semantics and thereby assigns different constellations of
correspondence and non-correspondence between the SITUATION REPRESENTATION
described by different concepts of PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT and the referential
WORLD SITUATION, then we will reasonably speculate whether these different core meanings encoded in each polysemous modal verb become a crucial point to motivate
their ordering restriction in multiple-modal construction. In the previous sections, as
Klinge (1993) suggests, we assume that the five Chinese polysemous modal verbs in
our study also share the same semantic field of POTENTIALITY and thereby provide
different degrees of procedural information about the POTENTIAL correspondence
between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION. In fact, three different
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
degrees of procedural information have been identified in the last chapter, in which
each degree encompasses its own representative polysemous modal verbs and they are
depicted as follows:
I. YINGGAI generates the only outcome of correspondence between SITUATION
REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION by eliminating the possibility of non-correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD
SITUATION.
II. YAO and HUI directly specify the correspondence between SITUATION
REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION.
III. KEYI and NENG hold the co-existence of correspondence/non-correspondence
between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION.
From the initial observation of these three degrees of procedural information, the first
degree denoted by YINGGAI has the highest assurance of correspondence between
SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION than the other two degrees because the speaker first rules out the possibility of non-correspondence when s/he
has full evidence in which it is impossible that SITUATION REPRESENTATION
eventually is not a true description of WORLD SITUATION so that the current
SITUATION REPRESENTATION nearly corresponds hundred percents with the referential
WORLD SITUATION. Compared with YINGGAI, though YAO and HUI also directly point
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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
out the outcome of correspondence between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD
SITUATION, it still has the chance that SITUATION REPRESENTATION is not a true description of WORLD SITUATION. Nevertheless, YAO and HUI still have higher
assurance than KEYI and NENG because the later two modals only hold the relation
between SITUATION REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION on the neutral position
without assuring the correspondence or non-correspondence between SITUATION
REPRESENTATION and WORLD SITUATION.
Additionally, although the utterances of sentences containing three modal verbs
occur rarely in corpus data, these three levels of procedural information mentioned
above themselves formulate a systematic pattern in the examples below:
(93) 地方首長 應該 要 能 傾聽市民的心聲 (GigaWord Corpus)
defang shouzhang yinggai yao neng qingting shimin de xinsheng local leader must should can listen citizen of heartfelt wish ‘Local leaders should be able to listen to citizens’ heartfelt wishes.’
(94) 國軍 應該 要 隨時 可以 進入戰備狀態 (GigaWord Corpus)
guojun yinggai yao suishi keyi jinru zhanbei zhuangtai military must should anytime can into combat readiness situation ‘Military should be able to get into combat readiness in anytime.’
(95) 小孩子 應該 會 能 了解父母的用心 (GigaWord Corpus)
xiaohaizi yinggai hui neng liaojie fumu de yongxin child probably will can realize parents of concern
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‘In terms of the promotion of domestic democracy, it is obligatory for political party to be able to set an ideal model.’
(97) 稅制結構 應該 要 能 與經濟同步正向成長 (GigaWord Corpus)
shuizhi jiegou yinggai yao neng yu jingji tongbu tax structure should will can with economic
zhengxiang chengzhang synchronous growing
‘Tax structure should be able to have synchronous growing with economic.’
(98) 對方 應該 會 可以 接受和解的條件 (GigaWord Corpus)
duifang yinggai hui keyi jieshou hejie de tiaojian other side probably will can accept reconciliation of condition
‘The other person involved probably will be able to accept the condition of reconciliation.’
Among all these examples, any other ordering variants in each sample will result
in semantically unacceptable sentences. Hence, we can see YINGGAI always occupies
the top position and then YAO & HUI and KEYI & NENG follow in that order. Although
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
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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.