IV. Modal Co-occurrence in Mandarin Chinese
4.1 Initial Observation within Descriptive-oriented Approach
國
立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
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Modal Co-occurrence in Mandarin Chinese
It is well-known that the adjacency of modal verbs in Chinese is well developed
and used frequently, while not all languages have such phenomenon, such as Standard
English and Korean. Generally speaking, the order of words is a factor that dominates
the meaning of sentence. Therefore, many linguists pay much attention to the
multiple-modal construction. In what follows we will use the traditional
descriptive-oriented approach to generate the initial observation on the
multiple-modal construction of polysemous modal verbs in Mandarin Chinese and
then apply our alternative semantics-pragmatics interface approach to explicate the
regularity of distribution of Chinese modal co-occurrence.
4.1 Initial Observation within Descriptive-oriented Approach
As we have discussed in earlier section, traditional studies identify that modality
system composes of three-layer modal interpretations cross-linguistically: epistemic,
deontic and dynamic. When these three-layer modal expressions are assigned in the
sentences containing two or more polysemous modal verbs in Mandarin Chinese, their
ordering restriction is not arbitrary but accords with a severe regulation. First, we can
find the same type of modal expression can co-occur in one sentence. See the
following examples:
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“He should be able to finish this homework.”
In (84) and (85), YINGGAI and HUI both have identical epistemic modal expression
because they specify speaker’s judgment of probability to the propositions ‘he hearing
this news’ and ‘he finishing this homework’ in both sentences respectively. So the
same kind of modal expression can be identified in one utterance. However, it does
not imply that these two modal verbs with identical modal expression can freely
interchange to each other in one utterance. Consider the following examples:
(86) a. 他 可能 應該 知道這件事
Ta keneng yinggai zhidao zhe-jian shi.
He might should know this matter
“It is possible that he should know this matter.”
b. 他 應該 可能 知道這件事
Ta yinggai keneng zhidao zhe-jian shi.
He should might know this matter
“It is possible that he should know this matter.”
(87) a. 他 可能 會 去美國
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Ta keneng hui qu meiguo He might will go America
“It is possible that he will go to America.”
b. *他 會 可能 去美國
Ta hui keneng qu meiguo He will might go America
“It is possible that he will go to America.”
In sentence (86), both YINGGAI and KENENG are interpreted as epistemic
interpretation co-occurring before common verbs and they can also interchange with
each other. However, (87b) is ungrammatical even though both KENENG and HUI
have epistemic interpretation. In fact, they can change each other in theory but they
are contradictory in semantics because KENENG expresses that something may
happen or may not happen, i.e. possibility while HUI denotes that something will
happen, i.e. certainty. When KENENG occurs before HUI, KENENG+HUI expresses
that it is possible that something will happen. On the contrary, HUI+KENENG
expresses the contradictory meaning, that is to say, it cannot express the certainty for
the uncertain things. So sentence (87b) is ungrammatical. On the other hand, YINGGAI
and KENENG in (86) can interchange with each other because they both interpret
possibility. Therefore, here we may temporally conclude that the order of modal verbs
in the same modal expression can interchange with each other only if their semantic
property is compatible.
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When different types of modal verbs occur with each other, they should obey the
ordering restriction of multiple-modal construction. The order of co-occurrence must
be epistemic > deontic > dynamic and they cannot interchange. Both (88) and (89)
can support this proposition:
(88) a. 你 應該 可以 能 做那件事
“You should be able to do that matter.”
c. *你 能 應該 可以 做那件事
“He should be willing to come.”
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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
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c. *他 願意 會 應該 來
Ta yuanyi hui yinggai lai He be willing to will should come “He should be willing to come.”
The above analysis reveals that not only can the different modal expression but the
same one be identified in one sentence. Meanwhile, all the evidences so far seem to
yield the implication that the order of the same type of modal verbs can interchange if
they have similar semantic property while the order of different types of modal verbs
must obey the ordering restriction. Nevertheless, the modal co-occurrence is still not
allowed in some cases even though these two polysemous modal verbs constitute
correct variants of multiple-modal expressions. Back to (21) as repeated in (90)
below:
(90) ‘You will be able to earn much money.’
a. 你 會 能 賺大錢
ni hui neng zhuan da-qian you will can earn much-money b. *你 能 會 賺大錢
ni neng hui zhuan da-qian you can able to earn much-money
(91) a. 你 會 可以 辦到的
ni hui keyi bandao-de you will able accomplish
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In (90b) NENG has deontic interpretation denoting personal promise while HUI has
dynamic interpretation denoting ability, in which they should be able to co-occur in
theory but result in ungrammatical pattern. The multiple-modal construction HUI +
KEYI in (91) has similar situation but they can interchange if they are both negated as
in (91b). Additionally, we may also confront another case in which the same form of
modal co-occurrence can be analyzed as different variants of multiple-modal
expressions. Consider the following examples extracted from Huang (1999):
(92) a. 他 應該 要 來
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N a tio na
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be I owe Yanji I necessary should give back ‘It’s me that owe Yanji so it’s necessary that I should give back.’
d. 戀愛 應該 要 衡量彼此的身分 (Huang, 1999)
lianai yinggai yao hengliang bici de shenfen To love necessary should judge each other POSS status ‘Before falling in love it is necessary that we should judge the status with each other.’
(92a) and (92b) have the same pattern of modal co-occurrence but the former
constitute an [epistemic-judgment + dynamic-volition] variant while the latter has
identical ‘deontic-obligation’ interpretation. However, with the help of context
information such as ‘Owing money’ in (92c) and ‘falling in love’ in (92d) we can see
YINGGAI+YAO in each sentence only has identical deontic expression because both
context information provide an obligation force.
To sum up, all of these problems raised so far can be generalized as follows: since
we have identified a three-layer modal construction in Mandarin Chinese, we expect
every Chinese polysemous modal verb should be able to co-occur in any position of
multiple-modal construction if they are semantically compatible. However, sentence
(90b) reveals that we cannot predict ungrammatical modal co-occurrence only
depending on the investigation of various senses of lexical meaning upon polysemous
modal verb itself. On the contrary, we should consider other constraints involved in
the restriction of modal co-occurrence, e.g. the elements surrounding polysemous
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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
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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).