人稱代詞之中文口語言談功能探析:文類比較

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語研究所碩士論文 Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University. 人稱代詞之中文口語言談功能探析:文類比較 Discourse Functions of Personal Pronouns in Spoken Chinese: A Genre Comparison. 指導教授: 張妙霞博士 Advisor: Dr. Miao-Hsia Chang 研究生: 謝佳琳 Student: Chia-Lin Hsieh. 中華民國一○二年七月 July, 2013.

(2) DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS IN SPOKEN CHINESE: A GENRE COMPARISON. A Dissertation Presented to Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. by. Chia-Lin Hsieh. July, 2013.

(3) 摘要本文採共時分析比較不同文類之中文人稱代名詞在言談中的使用情況。在不同的語境下，人稱代詞可呈現典範(canonical)或非典範(non-canonical)用法。過往文獻多著墨非典範用法的描述與分類，忽略探究人稱代詞於真實情境之應用。本研究以溝通互動為基準，以電視訪談秀 (TV interviews) 及日常對話 (daily conversations)為分析之來源。研究結果顯示人稱代詞在不同文類呈現頻率分佈與功能之差異。非典型單數代詞於電視訪談秀中出現頻率高於日常談話。談話者頻繁的使用非典型單數代詞(特別是第一與第二人稱單數)使得代詞具備較多元功能，也提高非典型用法在電視談話秀的頻率。探析人稱代詞之分佈與功能之異同，本文主張其差異來自不同文類中談話目的(speech goal)與話題(topic)之迥異。以觀眾為主(audience-oriented)的談話主題藉由人稱代詞之非典範用法，吸引未在場聽者之融入參與，以達成其言談目的。反之，以言談參與者為導向 (participant-oriented)的日常談話，著重於談話者間人際往來互動 (interpersonal relation)，故典範用法較常見於會話之中。總而論之，中文人稱代詞兼具典範用法與非典範用法之功能，其使用情形因不同文類之言談目的與話題影響而變異。關鍵字: 人稱代名詞，非典範用法，文類比較，言談目的，話題. i.

(4) Abstract The current study conducts a synchronic investigation in examining the uses of Chinese personal pronouns in distinct speech genres. Personal pronouns can be regarded as deictic (canonical) or non-deictic (non-canonical) under various contexts. Previous studies regarding the non-canonical use fail to provide a systematic analysis of pronoun uses; nor do they address the uses of pronouns in different genres. Built on the interactive nature of communication, two spoken genres, TV interviews and daily conversations are used for qualitative and quantitative comparison. The results indicate the asymmetric frequency distribution and functional distinction. The singular personal pronouns are more frequent in TV interviews than in daily conversations. The speakers tend to adopt the non-canonical singular form (especially the first and second person) whose constant occurrences lead to the diverse functions of these pronouns and further increase the token frequency in the TV talk. A further investigation of the distribution and function differences reveals that these differences are due to different speech purposes and dissimilar topics in speech. In TV talk, the audience-oriented topics aim at attracting the involvement and participation of the non-present hearers, and the inclusion of others can be achieved by adopting atypical personal pronouns. On the other hand, the participant-oriented conversations focus on the interpersonal relation of the speech participants, and thus the more occurrence of the canonical use. To conclude, Chinese personal pronouns display various functions aside from its deictic meaning and the pronoun uses are under the influence of the speech purposes and topics in different speech genres. Keywords: Personal pronoun, non-canonical use, genre comparison, speech goal, topic. ii.

(5) Acknowledgments Three years has passed in a blink of eye; during these days of studying in NTNU, I gained much help and support from people around me. The gratitude to them is beyond description, yet it is important to express my great appreciation for whoever assists me. Firstly, I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Professor Miao-Hsia Chang, who greatly inspires me to the field of pragmatics. She shows support and genuine care when I was in difficulty, either academically or personally. Without her constant encouragement, insightful suggestions, careful guidance, and the many other aspects of help, the completion of the current study would have never been possible. Also, I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Yung-O Biq and Professor Cherry Ing Li. Their invaluable and constructive comments to the thesis were an enormous help to me. Besides, I really appreciate their warm encouragement after the proposal and defense. To the teachers who have taught me in NTNU, I am very grateful to their illumination over the three years of my study in Taipei. Special thanks go to Hung-Che Lin who always offers helpful suggestions and spiritual support whenever I need him. Furthermore, I wish to extend the thanks to my friends, Hung-Chiu Lai, Sabrina Chou, Wang-Lin Tang, Shu-Yi Liao, Yuhan Carol Liao, Chung-Yin Tsai, Andres Chi, and Felix Tu for their company, assistance, and concern. Finally, my deepest gradtitude goes to my family members, my dad, mom and my sister, Chia-Chi for their unconditional support and care for me. Without their persistent love, I would not be where I am now.. iii.

(6) Table of Contents Chinese Abstract………………………………………………………………………i English Abstract……………………………………………………………………..ii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………..iii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………iv List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………vi Transcription Notation………...………...…………………………………………vii Chapter One Introduction…………………………………………………………..1 1.1 Background, Motivation and Purpose…………………………………………...1 1.2 Data and Methodology………………………………….………………………..2 1.3 Organization………………………………..…………………………………….3 Chapter Two Literature Review…………………………………………………….4 2.1 Canonical Use: Deictic Referential Expression………………………………….4 2.2 Non-canonical Use: Deictic and Non-deictic Reference……………………........7 2.2.1 First Person Pronouns……………………...……………………………..8 2.2.2.1 First Person Singular………………………………………………..8 2.2.2.2 First Person Plural…………………………………………………11 2.2.2 Second Person Pronouns: Singular and Plural…………………………..14 2.2.3 Third Person Pronouns…………………………………………………..23 2.2.3.1 Third Person Singular……………………………………………...23 2.2.3.2 Third Person Plural………………………………………………...32 2.3 Summary………………………………………………………………………..33 Chapter Three Personal Pronouns in Two Speech Genres……………………….35 3.1 Overall Results………………………………..………………………………...35 3.2 Non-canonical Uses of Personal Pronouns…...………………………………...36 3.2.1 First Person Singular Pronoun: Wo ‘I’ ……………………………………36 3.2.1.1 Impersonal Use…………………………………………………..36 3.2.1.2 Dramatic Use………………………………………………….....40 3.2.1.3 Metalinguistic Use……………………………………………....44 3.2.1.4 Summary of First Person Singular……………………………...45 3.2.2 Second Person Singular Pronoun: Ni ‘you’ ………………………………46 3.2.2.1 Metalinguistic Use…………………………………………………46 3.2.2.2 Impersonal Use………………………………………………….....49 3.2.2.3 Dramatic Use………………………………………………………53 iv.

(7) 3.2.2.4 Summary of Second Person Singular……………………………...58 3.2.3 Third Person Singular Pronoun: Ta ‘s/he’.………………………………..58 3.2.3.1 Redundant Use…………………………………………………….59 3.2.3.2 Generic Use……………………………………………………......61 3.2.3.3 Inferred Use……………………………………………………......63 3.2.3.4 Summary of Third Person Singular………………………………..66 3.2.4 First Person Plural Pronoun: Women ‘We’.…………………………….....67 3.2.4.1 Vague Use……………………………………………………….....67 3.2.4.2 Summary of First Person Plural…………………………………...74 3.2.5 Second Person Plural Pronoun: Nimen ‘You’ …………………………….74 3.2.6 Third Person Plural Pronoun: Tamen ‘They’ …………………………......76 3.2.6.1 Inferred Use……………………………………………………...77 3.2.6.2 Vague Use…………………………………………………….....79 3.2.6.3 Summary of Third Person Plural……………………………….....81 3.3 Summary.....……………………………..………………………………………..81 Chapter Four Comparison of the Two Speech Genres…………………………..82 4.1 Speech Goal........……....……………………………….………………………..84 4.2 Topic...……………………………………….………………………………….87 4.3 Summary................…………………………………………………………......92 Chapter Five Conclusion…………………………………………………………...94 Reference……………………………………………………………………….........95. v.

(8) List of Tables Table 1.1. Data for analysis. Table 2.1 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4. Non-canonical use of Chinese personal pronouns Spoken data in the two speech genres The canonical and non-canonical use in the two data banks Impersonal wo in the two spoken genres Dramatic wo in the two spoken genres. Table 3.5 Table 3.6 Table 3.7 Table 3.8 Table 3.9. Non-canonical categories of first person singular Metalinguistic ni in the two spoken genres Impersonal ni in the two spoken genres Dramatic ni in the two spoken genres Non-canonical categories of second person singular. Table 3.10 Table 3.11 Table 3.12 Table 3.13 Table 3.14. Non-canonical use of the third person singular Subcategories of the non-canonical use of the third person singular Non-canonical categories of third person singular Non-canonical categories of first person plural Non-canonical categories of second person plural. Table 3.15 Table 4.1. Non-canonical categories of third person plural Non-canonical use in daily conversations and TV interviews. vi.

(9) Transcription Notations Convention for transcription ： speaker identity 。 falling intonation contour (in Mandarin transcription) . , ?. falling intonation contour (in English transcription) maintained/continuing intonation contour rising/appeal intonation contour. ! .... ＝. animated tone omitted passages of transcription vowel lengthening/ lengthened syllable. () []. pause speech overlap. @ <@@> <T T> XX. laughter laughter quality code-switching to Taiwanese nondiscernible speech. Conventions for literal translation 1s first person singular 2s second person singular 3s third person singular 1pl 2pl 3pl ASS ASP. first person plural second person plural third person plural associative aspect. BA CL CPA CRS CSC. ba construction classifier complete action currently relevant state complex stative construction. DE DUR EXP GEN. de durative aspect experiential genitive. NEG. negative vii.

(10) PFV PRT NOM. perfective aspect particle nominative. POSS. possessive. viii.

(11) Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Background, Motivation and Purpose Personal pronouns have been diachronically investigated (Lu 1985, Chen 2009, and Wang 2009), and synchronically discussed under educational settings (Chao 2002 and Chang 2011), political discourses (Chang 1998, Kuo 2002, and Chen 2007), and other types of discourse.1 Both diachronic and synchronic approaches explore the typical deictic-referential use and the atypical non-referential use of personal pronouns with a special attention on the latter. Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990), for example, investigate the non-deictic uses of English personal pronouns and propose several criteria to distinguish these atypical uses. Biq (1991) focuses more specifically on the non-canonical use of Chinese second person singular in spoken Chinese. The two pioneer studies inspire later works, such as Lin (1993) and Wang (2007), in exploring Chinese personal pronouns. However, the identification and categorization of non-canonical use of personal pronouns in previous works does not reach an overall consensus. The inconsistency could be due to different categorization schemes and the uneven and miscellaneous collection of data sources, i.e. the inclusion of both written and spoken data in discussion. In fact, the genre difference in speech or text organization has long been recognized (Wierzbicka 1985, Bakhtin 1986, Swales 1990, Tolson 2001, Schiffrin, Tannen, Hamilton 2003, Hutchby 2006, and Wood 2009). For example, Wierzbicka (1985: 504) distinguishes a lecture from a causal talk since the latter demands less obvious preparation and involve mainly personal experiences. Furthermore, Bloor & Bloor (2007: 41) claim that personal pronouns occur less often in written formal genres like scientific reports than in causal spoken settings. To present a more satisfactory picture in the examination of Chinese personal pronouns, a careful consideration of genres and categorical criteria is required. Acknowledging the insufficiency in preceding work, the current study investigates discourse-pragmatic functions of personal pronouns in Chinese in two spoken genres, i.e. TV interviews and daily conversations. The aims are three-fold—firstly, to reveal how personal pronouns are used in these two speech situations and secondly, to re-examine the categorization of personal pronouns and provide a systematic classification of personal pronouns, and thirdly, to explore the similarity or difference of pragmatic and interactional functions in these two speech contexts, with a special attention on their non-canonical uses.2 We aim to address the following questions: How can personal pronouns in TV interviews and daily conversations be successfully classified? What are the distributions and the 1. Other genres include academic texts (Liu 2011 and Lu 2011), advertisement contexts (Huang 2009, Wang 2011), and typological comparison (King 2009, Tsai 2011, and Chang 2009). 2 The term ‘non-canonical use’ is interchangeable with the term, ‘atypical use’ hereafter. 1.

(12) discourse-pragmatic functions of the non-canonical use of personal pronouns in the two genres? Is there any difference between the two in terms of functions and distributions? What factors can explain for the non-canonical use of personal pronouns in the two speech genres? 1.2 Data and Methodology Two speech genres, TV interviews and daily conversations, were adopted in our investigation of the functional and distributional aspects of Chinese personal pronouns. Table 1.1 describes the data used for the analysis. Table 1.1: Data for analysis Source Types Length Total. NTU Mandarin Corpus3. Television programs Xinwen wa wa wa: Fangan jingji. 2100 Tao Xinwen. 新聞挖挖哇:反感經濟. 2100 掏新 90 mins. Daily conversations. 聞 90 mins. 180 mins. Each episode from each television program was transcribed. The first program used was Xinwen wa wa wa: Fangan jingji (新聞挖挖哇:反感經濟) broadcasted in October 22th, 2012, and the second program was 2100 Tao Xinwen (2100 掏新聞). The two programs discussed current news and government policies. The topic for the first television program involved the discussion of civic service appointment and possibility of bankruptcy of Labor Insurance, and the second program discussed the policy of raising electricity rate. The topics of the private conversation included actors, sports, and dogs. There are five participants in the first television program and six participants in the second one, including the hosts (two in the first and one in the second program). Two participants were in each daily conversation. There were two criteria used for the transcription. Firstly, only the participants’ talk was transcribed. The news shown during the program and the advertisements between sections were not included. Second, occasional code switching into Southern Min was not included in the discussion. The present study adopts both qualitative and quantitative approaches. All the participants’ utterances are transcribed. In a quantitative attempt, the total number of each personal pronoun will be counted and classified into previously proposed categories based on its property. To further investigate the function and distribution, a. 3. NTU Mandarin Corpus (National Taiwan University Mandarin Corpus) contains Mandarin data collected for decades and is availed from Professor Miao-Hsia Chang, who also contributed data to this corpus. 2.

(13) qualitative comparison will be conducted so as to reveal and display the actual uses of personal pronouns in different contexts. 1.4 Organization The structure of the thesis is as follows. Chapter One offers a general introduction of current study. Chapter Two contains detailed examination of previous literature of personal pronouns, especially in Mandarin Chinese. Chapter Three includes the analysis of the discourse-pragmatic functions of non-canonical uses in the two speech genres. Chapter Four compares the similarity and discrepancy of functions. Chapter Five offers a conclusion.. 3.

(14) Chapter Two Literature Review Personal pronoun, a subcategory in pronoun system, is defined under various domains. Lyons (1968: 470-481), for instance, incorporates semantic features and the idea of involvement in his definition of personal pronoun. First person pronoun, according to Lyons (1968), refers to the inclusion of the speaker and is specified as [+S(peaker)] and second person pronoun indicates the inclusion of the addressee and is specified as [+A(ddressee)]. Third person pronoun, since it neither includes the speaker nor the addressee, is hence marked as, [-S, -A], i.e. the exclusion of the speaker and hearer. Halliday and Hasan (1976:44) take a role-assignment approach to categorize the participants in the delimitation of personal pronouns. Speakers and addressees are subsumed under the category of ‘speech roles’ and the human (she/he/they) and non-human (it) third parties are placed in ‘other roles’. The concept of the participant roles is incorporated into the deixis system (Fillmore 1975, Lyons 1977 and Levinson 1983).4 Person deixis, the most relevant to the current investigation of personal pronouns, specifies that participant roles are grammaticalized and encoded to the category of person (Lyons 1977: 637-646). The role played by the speaker in conversations is encoded by the grammatical category of the first person, and the subsidiary role to the speaker is realized as the second person. Third person refers to the role enacted by neither the speaker nor the addressee (Levinson 1983: 61-73). The role-reference description is considered to be the deictic use of personal pronouns. In deictic use, grammatical person is used indexically to indicate the participants/ referents that can be clearly identified in the speech context. A deictic use is thus conceived to be canonical, in contrast to the non-deictic use whose intended referents would either fail to be lucidly pointed out or be mismatched with the grammatical person or number of personal pronouns. Previous definitions place their major emphasis on the discussion of the deictic referential canonical use of personal pronouns. In the following review, the typical use of Chinese personal pronouns would be introduced in section 2.1, and would be followed by the intriguing non-canonical expressions in section 2.2. The final section, section 2.3 summarizes the chapter. 2.1 Canonical Use: Deictic Referential Expressions The canonical deictic description of the personal pronoun retrieves its interpretation from the grammatically encoded or realized roles in discourse contexts. The deictic roles of Chinese personal pronouns occur in an isomorphological form. 4. There are five grammatically defined categories of deixis. They are person, space, time, discourse and social deixis (Fillmore 1975, Lyons 1977 and Levinson 1983). 4.

(15) The first person singular occurs as an independent morpheme wo ‘I’ and represents the speaker. The second person singular occurs as ni ‘you’ and stands for the addressee. The third person singular ta ‘s/he’ refers to the third party (Lu 1985 and Liu et al. 2001). Approaching personal pronouns from the perspective of deictic center, Levinson (1983: 63-64) proposes that a speaker tends to stand on an ego-centric position and talks to others from the position in which s/he is located. The speaker regards himself/herself as the first person, and the opposing addressee as the second person, and the one who is not involved in the discourse as the third person. An example of the typical deictic use of the personal pronoun is shown in (2.1), where the speaker A wants to borrow a ruler from B. (2.1).  A:. B:  . A: B:. 可以跟你借一隻尺嗎? Keyi gen ni jie yi zhi chi ma Can with 2s borrow one CL ruler PRT (With a hand gesture pointing to the person sitting next to him) 我沒有耶。你可以跟他借。 Wo mei you ye ni keyi gen ta jie 1s NEG have PRT 2s can with 2s borrow 他有很多支。 ta you hen duo zhi 3s have many CL ‘Can (I) borrow a ruler from you?’ ‘I don’t have one. You can borrow one from him. He has many rulers.’ (Wu 2003: 33-34). The speaker B views herself as the center of the source in the utterance, and chooses the first person singular, i.e. wo ‘I’ to indicate herself. The speaker A who stands in the opposing position from B is assigned a second person role by the use of ni ‘you’. The third party, who is deictically present yet does not involve in the conversation, is indicated by a third person singular, ta ‘s/he’. In addition to the contextual deictic interpretation, referentiality is another means in defining the typical use of personal pronouns. In this case, the first person singular wo refers to the speaker, the second person singular ni to the addressee and the third person singular ta to a third party. The canonical use of personal pronouns to indicate the referents in the discourse context is realized through deixis and referentiality. The typical use of the third person singular involves an anaphoric relation. That is, as the third person singular is co-referential with and preceded by a noun phrase, it will not be considered as an atypical case (Li & Thompson 1981 and Biq & Huang 2011).. 5.

(16) 去年來了一個法國人， Qunian lai le yi ge faguoren Last year come RST one CL French  他會寫中國字。 ta hui xie zhong guo zi 3s can write Chinese word. (2.2). ‘Last year, there comes a French, (and) he can write Chinese.’ (Li & Thompson 1981: 126) The third person singular is used anaphorically to indicate the preceding noun phrase, yi ge faguoren ‘a French’. The referent, though not deictically present in the speech context, refers to a specific person and can be clearly identified by the speaker. It should be specified that dissimilar to Wu (2003: 40), both the inferred and unspecified referents (either singular or plural) are subsumed under the non-canonical use in the current study. The plural forms of personal pronouns in Mandarin Chinese is formulated by inflecting the semantic plural marker, -men to its singular forms, such as wo ‘I,’ ni ‘you,’ and ta ‘s/he’, respectively. The first person plural, women ‘we’ could be used inclusively to include typical dual participants, i.e. the speaker and the addressee, or to contain larger members in a speech context (inclusion of the speaker and more than one addressee), or it can be used exclusively to indicate the speaker and participants other than the addressee(s). As can be seen in the examples below, the women in (2.3) refers to both the speaker and John, while the women in (2.4) refers to the speaker and the children yet not the addressee(s). (2.3) . 我們. 高興得 Women gaoxing de 1pl happy DE. 太 tai too. 早 zao early. 了， le PRT. 約翰。 yuehan John. ‘We complimented ourselves too soon, John.’ (2.4) . 我 Wo 1s. 跟 gen and. 孩子，我們 haizi women children 1pl. 可以 keyi can. 照顧 zhaogu take-care. 自己。 ziji self. ‘The children and I can look after ourselves.’ (Quirk 1985: 340, Wang 2007: 15) It has been proposed that the morphological distinction of the inclusive zamen ‘we’ and the exclusive women ‘we’ exists in the vernacular use in Peking (Liu et al. 2001). The distinction of inclusive zamen and exclusive woman is not pervasively found in the spoken Chinese in Taiwan; instead, the women could either include or exclude the 6.

(17) addressees, depending on the actual situation in conversations. 5 2.2 Non-canonical Use: Deictic and Non-deictic Reference The deictic use of Chinese personal pronouns could be used non-canonically (Lin 1993, Chang 1998, Wang 2006, Wang 2007, Wang 2008, Chen 2009, Nie 2009, Yang 2011, Hsiao 2011 and Liu & Xiong 2012). Its non-canonicity lies in the discordance of the personal pronouns and its intended referent, i.e. a mismatch of person, number or both person and number with the intended referent. In the other non-canonical use, the personal pronoun is used non-deictically or non-referentially, and it is not plausible to locate a deictic referent. Previous studies show inconsistent results in the categorization of the non-deictic, atypical use of personal pronouns and thus the boundary and definition of each category should be further delimited. Even if the non-canonical use of personal pronouns aims to achieve pragmatic effects in speech, the distinction between non-deitic/non-referential use and mismatched use exists, that is, the identifiability of referents in speech context. For instance, a well-recognized non-deictic use of personal pronouns is the generic second person singular (Biq 1991, O’Conner 1994, Bredel 2002, Hyman 2004, Chang 2006, Wang 2008, Stirling & Manderson 2011 and Liu & Xiong 2012). The generic you, unlike the mismatched personal pronoun that can be successfully identified through the speech context, indicates more than a single receiver and its identification of referents is far less plausible. The following section involves the atypical use of both deictic and non-deictic/non-referential personal pronouns, with a special attention on the latter because of its disarrayed categorization in the literature. The review will be divided by grammatical person: first person in section 2.2.1, second person in section 2.2.2 and third person in section 2.2.3.. 5. The example of the exclusive women and the inclusive zanmen ‘we’ is given for illustration.. (i)  你們 Nimen 2pl  咱們 zanmen 1pl. 是 shi are 都 dou all. 北方人， beifang ren north people 是中國人。 shi zhongguoren are Chinese. 我們 women 1pl. 是 shi are. 南方 nanfang south. 人。 ren people. ‘You are from the North, and we are from the South. We are all Chinese.’ (Chao 1979: 283) The women is used to refer people from the South and the zamen includes all the participants in the speech context. 7.

(18) 2.2.1 First Person Pronouns 2.2.1.1 First Person Singular Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990), in their analysis of English personal pronouns, propose that languages with a closed pronoun set such as Mandarin Chinese, German, and Italian display the feature of impersonal use. Unlike the referential deictic use, the impersonal use of personal pronoun refers to one or more non-specific person(s) (1990: 740). It is proposed that English pronouns I, we, you could function as impersonal pronouns, and are interchangeable with one, everyone, anyone or someone without altering their meanings (though the rhetorical effect could vary and the stylistic favor may lose). The example below demonstrates the use of the impersonal I in a written context. (2.5) . We form a frame of script for this kind of situation…Thus, in order to be able to take the subway in New York I simply need a “taking a subway” script or frame if I have one and supply now relevant specific information about the situation…. (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 741-742). Example (2.5) is excerpted from a co-authored book. The authors’ use of I instead of we in the description and the I’s interchangeability with one or you (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 742) suggest the impersonal characteristics of the first person singular. The occurrence of English impersonal I, however, is restrictive and it appears ‘felicitous only in a context where this ‘role model’ sense is called for in a purportedly hypothetical discourse’ (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 753). The use of Chinese first person singular wo as an impersonal pronoun is infrequent as well. Previous studies (Lin 1993, Wang 2007) provide few instances and have different focuses toward the attributes of the impersonal first person singular proposed by Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990). Consider (2.6) and (2.7). (2.6) 沒有進來這個電台以前， Meiyou jinlai zhege diantai yiqian Not come this broadcasting-station before 根本不曉得內部的運作是怎麼 genben bu xiaode neibu de yunzuo shi zenme fundamental NEG know inside NOM operation be how 一回事。何況他們每個人在 yi hui shi hekuang tamen meigeren zai one CL thing moverover 3pl everyone DUR 做節目的時候都很認真。 zuo jiemu de shihou dou hen renzhen make program NOM when all very serious  因為不是說我一個禮拜做個 8.

(19) yinwei bu shi because NEG be  六天七天 liu tian qi tian six day seven day 敷衍了事， fu-yan-liao-shi go-through-the-motion. shuo wo yi ge say 1s one CL 的節目，我 de jiemu wo NOM program 1s 唸唸 nian nian read read. libai week 只是 zhis hi only be 稿。 gao script. zuo ge do CL 去 qu go. ‘Not until entering the broadcasting station will (one) ever realize how things operate inside. Moreover, every one of them is very serious in making a program, and I just go through the motions, reading from the script.’ (Lin 1993: 91) (2.7). 你 Ni 2s 我 wo 1s 就 jiu just. 比方說， bifangshuo for-instance 當然也 dangran ye surely also 看一個 kan yi ge see one CL. 我可以. 向東走， wo keyi xiang dong zou 1s can toward east go 可以向西走…， keyi xiang xi zou can toward west go 人怎麼做。 ren zenme zuo person how do. ‘For instance, I can go east, or I can surely go west…it depends on you.’ (Wang 2007: 53) In (2.6), the impersonal wo appears in hypothetical context where the speaker, a psychological consoler, mimics the record producers who speak in their defense when facing the misconception of the outer groups. The use of impersonal wo suggests the speaker’s ‘intention to convince the listeners of his/her account’ (Lin 1993: 93), and it also gives rise to the ‘egotistic or even obstructive overtone’ in the speech. In Wang’s (2007) example, the utterance is spoken by a master who takes himself as a model and assumes that he is no different from others who could make whatever choice they like. Wang (2007: 52-53) lays more concerns on illustrating how speakers take themselves as the model in an authority speech whose statement resorts to the general truth and thus she does not focus on the illustration of the pragmatic effect of the impersonal wo as Lin (1993) does. Furthermore, the impersonal wo in Lin’s (1993) example, i.e. (2.6) is similar to the mismatched first person singular in Hsiao’s (2011) instance, i.e. (2.8). (2.8). Writer:. 然後， Ranhou Then 我這. 那時候我 na shihou wo that time 1s 輩子絕對. 就發誓 jiu fashi then swear 不要讓. 說， shuo say 9.

(20) . Host:. . wo zhe beizi juedui buyao rang 1s this life never NEG let 這個女人養。 zhege nuren yang this women support (Laughter for 2.28 seconds) 就想我要報仇，就算寫格子 Jiu xiang wo yao baochou jiusuan xie-gezi then think 1s want revenge even-if write 我也要拼了命，對不對? wo ye yao pinleming duibudui 1s also have-to sacrifice for my life right ‘I swore to myself that I will never let this woman do this (providing financial support).’ ‘I think, I want to become successful by all means, so desperate for it. Right?’ (Hsiao 2011: 801). Writer: Host:. In (2.8), the intended referent of the mismatched wo is the addressee. The speaker, i.e. the host, utters the addressee’s inner thought so as to show her understanding toward his situation. The mismatched wo, according to Hsiao’s (2011) proposal, displays the speaker’ understanding to the hearer’s narration and reflects the addressee’s inner thought, whose effects are also found in (2.6). That is to say, the speaker in (2.6) also displays her understanding toward the addressees by boldly presuming their inner thoughts so as to make her talk sound more convincing. In some instances, the impersonal wo is weak in its referential function to indicate people and has instead an interpersonal effect in some speech contexts. That is, the impersonal wo becomes non-referring (Chang 2005, Hsu 2008, Chen 2009, and Tsai 2011). (2.9).  你 Ni 2s. 來 lai come. 我 wo 1s. 往。 wang go. ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’ (Hsu 2008: 47) (2.10).  你一言， Ni yi yan 2s one word. 我一語。 wo yi yu 1s one word. ‘Bickering with each other.’ (Chang 2005: 107) 10.

(21) The wo in both examples above co-occurs with the second person singular, and the wo and ni do not refer to the speech participants. The two impersonal pronouns work together to depict the interactive, reciprocal relation between I and you. The first person singular not merely demonstrates an impersonal use of taking oneself as the role model in a hypothetical context, but it displays the interpersonal function, i.e. the non-referring use in the discourse context as well. 2.2.1.2 First Person plural The first person plural is more commonly discussed than its singular form in terms of the atypical use. The impersonal use can be found in first person plural and it is similar to another concept, i.e. vague use (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990) as both of them are non-deictic and the referents they indicate could not be clearly identified in a given speech situation. It is thus necessary to make a distinction of the two uses. Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990) propose that the distinction depends largely on the predicate it follows as can be seen in (2.11) and (2.12). (2.11)  We can generate an infinite number of sentences. (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 741) (2.12)  We ought to do something to reduce the bureaucracy at our university. (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 745) The we in (2.11) is an impersonal use while the we in (2.12) is used vaguely. The impersonal we refers to anyone or everyone and vague we indicates specific but non-identified groups of people in speech contexts (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 742). In (2.11), anyone could produce numerous sentences if s/he wants to, whereas in (2.12), not everyone should be responsible for or feel obligated to the bureaucracy at university—at least not for a vagrant or a retailer. To further illustrate the differences between the vague use and the impersonal use, four characteristics are proposed (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990 and Lin 1993). Firstly, the vague use could exclude its reference that the deictic use would normally signify. Secondly, it could not be substituted with the indefinite one. Thirdly, in the indirect speech, it results in a pronoun shift, and finally, it carries a rhetorical contrast when occurring with they. The Chinese example of the women ‘we’ is shown in (2.13). The speaker is a record producer. (2.13) 我覺得整個娛樂業 Wo juede zheng yule ye 1s feel whole entertainment industry 唱片公司本身還有所有的 changpian gongsi benshen haiyou suoyou de. 就是 jiushi that-is 媒體， meiti 11.

(22) record company itself and all NOM media 比如說電視拉這些，就是說 birushuo dianshi la zhexie jiushishuo for-example television PRT these that-is-to-say  我們自己沒有做好，然後已經 women ziji mei you zuo hao ranhou yijing 1pl self NEG have do good then already 讓市場開始屏棄唱片公司的說法…。 rang shichang kaishi bingqi changpian gong si de shoufa let market begin abandon record company NOM pattern ‘I feel that (it has to do with) the whole entertainment industry, you know, the record company itself, and all the media, such as television, and so on. That is to say, we ourselves are not doing a good job and now have already made the market begin to abandon the usual pattern of the record company.’ (Lin 1993: 95-96) The women here is used vaguely rather than impersonally for the following reasons. Firstly, the speaker could exclude himself by saying ‘I don’t mean me’ to root out his inclusion by the use of women (while it is not plausible in impersonal women since the impersonal use surely includes everyone in the speech context). Secondly, the vague women refers to the members in the entertainment enterprise and does not involve the addressees. It cannot be interchangeable with the meiyi ge ren ‘everyone or anyone’ to include the general public. Thirdly, the vague use would undergo a pronoun shift in indirect speech. For instance, when a third person heard the utterances in (2.13) and told it to her friend, she could rephrase it as ‘He (the record producer) said that it is themselves that do not do a good job and let the markets abandon the record company’ (Lin 1993: 97). The ourselves, ‘we (reflexive)’ in (2.13) is shifted to themselves ‘them (reflexive)’ in the indirect speech. These characteristics distinguish the vague use from the impersonal use in first person plural. Another vague use of women ‘we’ is not found in English but in Chinese. (2.14). 今天 Jintian Today  我們 women 1pl 來 lai come. 我們 women 1pl 搖籃 yaolan cradle 看 kan see. 邀請到了是 yaoqing dao le shi invite CPA PFV be 義工張育聖， yigong changyusheng volunteer Chang-Yu-Sheng 看育禎今天....。 kan yusheng jintian see Yu-Sheng today. ‘The cradle volunteer we invite today is our Chang Yi-Sheng. Let’s see which little friend Chang Yu-Sheng is looking for today….’ 12.

(23) (Lin 1993: 101) (2.15)  看我們 Kan women See 1pl 把這次 ba zhe ci BA this CL. 小王同學多能幹， xiao-wang tongxue duo nenggan Xiao-Wang classmate many capable 的活動搞得有聲有色的。 de huodong gao de you-sheng-you-se de NOM activity gao CSC impressive NOM. ‘How capable of our Mr. Wang is. He did such a magnificent work on that activity.’ (Nie 2009) Nie (2009) characterizes the vague women as an attribute to modify the noun(s) it follows, and proposes that the use of the vague women leads to a sense of friendliness. Nevertheless, the women in (2.14) and (2.15) is distinct from the previous examples in two aspects. Firstly, it excludes both the speaker and the addressee, and secondly, it does not carry a propositional content, so the deletion of it seems to be grammatically plausible. These aspects support the idea that women here is pragmatically driven and works as a means to show the intimacy between the speaker and the person s/he introduces. A mismatched use of personal pronouns and its intended referent is also found in the first person plural. It occurs as the first person plural is used to indicate a single speaker as in (2.16) and (2.17) or to refer to another group of people who should be indicated by second or third person plural as in (2.18). (2.16). 上 Shang Last  第九 dijiu ninth. 周 zhou week 課， ke lesson. 我們 women 1pl 現在 xianzai now. 已經 yijing already. 我們 women 1pl. 講 jiang say 講 jiang say. 完了 wan le complete PFV 第十課。 dishi ke tenth lesson. ‘Last week, we have finished lesson nine, and now we’re going to introduce lesson ten.’ (Liu et al. 2001: 36) (2.17)  我們挪一挪 Women nuo-yi-nuo 1pl move. 好不好? hao-bu-hao good-not-good. ‘Can we move a bit?’ (Wang 2007: 56). 13.

(24) (2.18)  老師 Laoshi Teacher 勇 yong brave. 說: 希望我們每個 shuo xiwang women meige say wish 1pl every 於攀登科學高峰。 yu pandeng kexue gaofeng to climb science peak. 同學 tongxue classmate. 都能 dou neng all can. ‘Teacher said, (I) wish our every classmate can scale the peaks of science.’ (Liu et al. 2007: 74) As can be judged from the context, the women in (2.6) refers to the speaker instead of the addressees since the verb, jiang ‘say’ reveals the intended referent of the personal pronoun, i.e. the teacher, who takes the main responsibility in lectures. Nevertheless, in (2.17), the women ‘we’ is neither inclusively nor exclusively used, but it refers to the addressee who should be deictically indicated by the second person singular, ni ‘you.’ The speaker’s use of first person plural to indicate himself/herself would be regarded as speakers’ intention to stay humble, keep low-key (Liu et al. 2001: 36), show his/her respect to the hearers, or include the addressee as a group member (Yang 2011), while their adoption of the mismatched women to refer to the addressee would be taken as decreasing the sense of directness and softening the request (Wang 2007: 56 and Yang 2011: 36-38). As for the mismatched use in (2.18), it is speaker-exclusive and it can be replaced with nimen ‘you (plural)’. The functions of this use would be shortening the psychological distance between the teacher and the students (Chang 2005: 109, Chen 2009: 205), showing affiliation with the students (Chang 1998: 65 and Chang 2005: 109), establishing solidarity (Chang 1998: 65) and displaying friendliness (Liu et al. 2007, Chen 2009: 205 and Nie 2009). 2.2.2 Second Person Pronouns: Singular and Plural The non-canonical use of the second person pronouns has received wide attention (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990, Biq 1991, Lin 1993, Wang 2006, Wang 2007, Wang 2008 and Liu & Xiong 2012). The works of Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990) and Biq (1991) inspire later discussion of Chinese second person pronoun (Lin 1993, Wang 2006, Wang 2007 and Liu & Xiong 2012). The review of second person pronoun would place the focus mainly on Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990), Biq (1991) and the important details in the studies after Biq (1991). The impersonal use of English second person pronoun is a major focus of Kitagawa & Lehrer’s (1990) study. The environments for the impersonal you to occur are categorized. The impersonal you can occur in the context of ‘life drama,’. 14.

(25) ‘situational insertion,’ and ‘formulation of morals or truisms’. 6 The occurrence of impersonal use in situational insertion and life drama is highly related to the verb tense in achieving the intended pragmatic effects. Example (2.19), (2.20) and (2.21) are instances of situational insertion, life drama, and moral or truism, respectively. (2.19). Yesterday, we went to Sabino Canyon. And I was talking with this guy who happened to drop in on us. And all of the sudden he began to get agitated  and he swung at me. You react instinctively at a time like that. I hit him back.. (2.20). You’re going down the high way, you’re having a wonderful time, singing a  song and suddenly—You get into an argument.. (2.21) You kill yourself to raise your kids properly and guess what happens. (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 749) Situational insertion in (2.19) shows the alternation of the past to the present tense so as to achieve the intended effect, i.e. to show that everyone would instinctively act as the speaker does if they were in an identical situation. Life drama scenario in (2.20), on the other hand, reflects a contrast by using the progressive tense to set the scene and the present tense to display its ‘resolution’. Formulation of moral or truism in (2.21) refers to a general truth that is applicable in all circumstances and hence it could be achieved regardless of the alternation in the verb tense. Wang (2007: 56-67) argues that Chinese impersonal pronouns does not occur in the context of ‘formation of moral or truism’. Instead, the impersonal ni and women, though less formal, co-occur with a statement or generalization. 7 She argues that the formation of truism or moral is realized by Chinese zero pronouns and that formulating truism or moral is not found in the impersonal use of Chinese personal pronouns. As in first person plural, the impersonal use and the vague use in second person pronoun are distinguished. Two examples are given below for illustration. (2.22) Two hundred years ago, you used to go into the forest when you wanted firewood for yourself. (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 744) (2.23) You’re—I don’t mean you personally—you’re going to destroy us in a nuclear war. (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 743) 6. The concepts of ‘situational insertion and formulation of morals or truisms come from the study of French tu/vous (Laberge & Sankoff 1979). 7 Impersonal ni ‘you’ and women ‘we’ are less formal in comparison to the use of universal pronouns, daja ‘everyone’, ren ‘people’, renmen ‘people’ or zero pronoun in making generalization in Mandarin Chinese. 15.

(26) The you in (2.22) could refer to the speaker, the addressee or to anyone in need of firewood two hundred years ago. It can be replaced by the indefinite one or the impersonal we, and is regarded as impersonal and non-deictic use. The you in (2.23), on the other hand, is vague. The utterance is spoken by a European woman who expresses her thoughts on American political and military policy in Europe. It is understandable that the vague you does not refer to the addressee who did not actually participate in the decision-making process, so the exclusion of the addressee—by saying ‘I don’t mean you personally’ is plausible.8 Furthermore, in an indirect speech, the vague you would undergo a pronoun shift and should be altered to the third person plural they, that is, ‘The European women said that they–not her personally—are going to destroy us in a nuclear war’ (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 743). Biq (1991), in her examination of non-canonical use of second person pronoun proposes that the dramatic and metalinguistic uses are another two atypical uses in spoken Chinese aside from the impersonal use. It is argued that the dramatic use is the ‘impersonal use in acceleration’ (Biq 1991: 313) as ‘more than one person is impersonated so that a complete shift of the frame reference takes place’ (Biq 1991: 313). The dramatic use occurs in a situation where the speaker discards his/her viewpoint in the discourse situation and impersonates another character in the described situation as is shown in (2.24). (2.24) F:. M:. F:. M:. 8. 這個 Zhege This 嗯。 En PRT 得 De Have-to 不 bu NEG 靠 kao depend 對。 Dui Right. 就 = jiu just. 靠 kao depend 不 bu NEG 一 yi one. 思想教育， sixiang jiaoyu though education 能靠脅迫也不 neng kao xiepo ye bu can depend force also NEG 種威脅的辦法。 zhong weixie de banfa CL force NOM way. 能 neng can. Wang (2007) proposes a different yet imprecise interpretation on the characteristics of vague you. She argues that if the you is used vaguely, the deictic referent of you should be excluded. However, according to Kitagawa & Lehrer’s (1990), the vague use does not necessarily exclude the deictic referent; rather, it could single out the deictic referent and not to include it under a statement that contains vague you. 16.

(27) F:.  你不 Ni bu 2s NEG  讓你 rang ni let 2s 就靠 jiu kao just depend. 好好 haohao well 窮 qiong poor 大家 dajia everyone. 工作， gongzuo work 下去沒 xia mei down NEG 自覺。 zijue self-conscious. 飯吃， fan chi rice eat. ‘F: ‘This is =’ M: ‘Mm.’ F: ‘(It) got to depend on: ideological.Education. (It) couldn’t be solved by imposition. Nor could it be solved by threat.’ M: ‘Right.’ F: ‘(Since) you don’t work hard, (we’ll) let you stay poor and have nothing to eat.’ (Biq 1991: 311) The dramatic ni above refers not to the current addressee in the discourse situation but to the addressee(s) in the described scenario where people do not work hard.9 Besides, it is suggested that not only the second person, but the first and third person could also be used dramatically in a described situation, as in (2.25). (2.25)     . 9. 有時候.... 小孩子就會回來 Youshihou xiaohaizi jiu hui huilai Sometime children just will come-back 跟我們說，媽，那個我們班同學， gen women shuo ma nage women ban tong xue with 1pl say mother that 1pl class classmate 他 1 今天得到什麼，我得到了什麼， ta yijin tian de dao shenme wo de dao le shenme 3s today get PFV what 1s get CPA PFV what 那他2比他3 差一點。 na ta bi ta cha yidian that 3s compare 3s worse a-bit 那你問他4 一句，再多問他 5 一句， na ni wen ta yi ju zai duo wen ta yi ju then 2s ask 3s one CL more many ask 3s one CL 你覺得他6 為什麼會比你好? ni juede ta weishenme hui bi ni hao 2s feel 3s why will compare 2s good. If it is taken as a direct quotation, the personal pronouns would refer canonically; however, the current study follows Biq’s (1991) defining criteria and focuses on the switch of context from current speech situation to a described one in conversation. 17.

(28) ‘Sometimes,….children will come back to say to us, Mom, that guy in our class, s/he gets what, I get what. And s/he is worse than s/he. Then you ask her/him one thing, and ask him one more thing. Eh, do you know why s/he could do better than you?’ (Lin 1993: 103-104) The first and second person singular are used in the described situation and refer to the speakers’ son and the speaker, respectively. The women is neither used exclusively nor inclusively but refers to the speaker who speaks from her son’s viewpoint. There are six tokens of the third person pronoun ta ‘s/he’. Based on the contextual information, we know that the second, fourth, and fifth ta refer to the son and the first, third, and sixth ta indicate her son’s classmates in the described context. Chang (1998) argues that the two uses discussed in Biq (1991), i.e. impersonal and dramatic ni in Chinese, could be combined into one impersonal category without further specifying the reason. However, the definitions of the two uses display their fundamental distinction. Take Lin’s (1993) three accounts in differentiating the impersonal from the dramatic use for illustration. Firstly, the impersonal use focuses on the conveyance of generality, whereas the dramatic use emphasizes the shift of roles and perspectives from the current discourse situation to a hypothetical situation. Secondly, the impersonal use could be replaced by the indefinite one, while it is not possible in the dramatic use. Thirdly, the impersonal use is limited to ni, wo, and women in Chinese conversations (according to Lin’s (1993) and Wang’s (2007) analysis) whereas the dramatic use is applicable to all personal pronouns (according to Biq’s (1991) proposal). Based on the distinctions, the dramatic use should be treated as individual category and should be separate from the impersonal use. Another non-canonical use proposed by Biq (1991) is the metalinguistic ni ‘you’. It is non-propositional and occurs mostly in spoken Chinese. (2.26)  就是醫藥，對嘛，你整個的學校 Jiushi yiyao dui ma ni zhengge de xuexiao That-is medicine right PRT 2s whole NOM school 也多了，恩，上小學， ye duo le en shang xiaoxue also many PRT PRT attend elementary-school 上中學的人都多了， shang zhongxue de ren dao duo le attend jounior-high NOM people all many PRT 那麼上醫學院的人 name shang yi xueyuan de ren then attend medicine school NOM people 也多了。 ye duo le also many PRT 18.

(29) ‘Just medicine, surely, (you) the number of schools on the whole increases, eh, the number of people going to grade schools and middle schools increases, then the number of people going to medical schools will increase, too.’ (Biq 1991: 314) The metalinguistic ni ‘you’ above does not carry the propositional content and seems to function as an attention-gatherer to involve the addressees in the interactive communication (Biq 1991). The metalinguistic ni refers deictically to the intended participant role whom the speaker calls and is used ‘as a collective indexical referring to the intended recipient(s) as a group’ (Biq 1991: 317). Furthermore, Chang (1998) suggests that the metalinguistic ni here could be replaced by the first person plural women even though she does not point out whether any rhetorical effect in the alternation of ni and women would be produced. Furthermore, the metalinguistic ni could be highly idiomatic and collocates with the verbs, such as ren ‘to let be,’ ping ‘depend’ and sui ‘as one pleases’ (Lu 1985: 22). Chen (2009: 211) notes that the ni in the ren+ni ‘as you wish’ originally carries impersonal readings, referring to anyone as in (2.27), while it is non-referential in other contexts, as in (2.28). (2.27)  憑 Ping Depend 有 you have. 你世間. 稀奇 ni shijian xiqi 2s world unique 了錢那 le qian na CRS money that. 作 zuo do 一 yi one. 怪 guai mischief 件做 jian zuo CL do. 的 de NOM 不 bu NEG. 東西， dongxi thing 出來。 chulai out. ‘No matter what unusual and freaky it is. All things are obedient to money.’ (Lu 1985: 22) (2.28)  任你 Ren ni To-let-be 2s 我也要 wo ye yao I also want. 是 shi be 聞 wen smell. 龍潭虎穴， longtanhuxue dragon- pool-tiger-den 一聞。 yi wen one smell. ‘No matter how a dangerous spot it is. I must explore it.’ (Chen 2009: 211) In addition to the impersonal, vague, dramatic and metalinguistic use of the second person pronoun ni, the function-motivated projective use is proposed (Lin 1993). The primary function of it is to agree with the addressee by ‘attributing fault to 19.

(30) a third party as a means of self-defense or self-justification’ (Lin 1993: 109). It is, according to Lin (1993), specific to the second person singular. Take (2.29) for instance. The following conversation is between a doctor and a nurse. The doctor uses the projective ni to indicate the third party and implicitly speaks in defense of the nurse. (2.29). 她說妳們這樣就輕鬆多了阿！ Ta shuo nimen zheyang jiu qingsong duo le a 3s say 2pl this-way just easy many PRT PRT 一個人做事，一個 XX。 yi ge ren zuo shi yi ge one CL people do thing one CL D: 不是，不能這樣講， Bu shi bu neng zheyang jiang NEG COP NEG can this-way say  你原來人員就不足， ni yuanlai renyuan jiu bu zu 2s original staff just NEG sufficient [然後補人多阿。] ranhou bu ren duo a then supply people many PRT N: [他說以前也是] 一個人上班， Ta shuo yiqian ye shi yi ge ren shang ban 3s say before also COP one CL people go-to work 現在也是，為什麼要補呢? xianzai ye shi weishenme yao bu ne now also be why have-to supply Q N:. ‘He says, you will get relax then—one is working, and another is XX.’ ‘No! Not like that. (The fact is that) you had a shortage of staff in the first place, not that it was originally enough and then more than enough personnel is to be recruited.’ N: ‘He says, in the past there was just such a number of people working, and so is it now; why recruit the staff?’ (Lin 1993: 110) N: D:. It is mentioned that the projective use also involves the shift of reference frame as the dramatic use does. In this case, the speaker switches from the discourse context to a described scenario where he directly speaks to the people in Human Resource Department. Observing the similarity of the projective and the dramatic use, Chang (1998) proposes that the projective use can be subsumed under the dramatic use. Besides, Chang (1998) offers another interpretation for example (2.29) by identifying the use of ni as the vague use, that is, ni refers to a group of nurses who are in need of co-workers in the first place. 20.

(31) Taking a diachronic approach, Chen (2009) proposes that Chinese second person singular undergoes the process of generality and grammaticalization. She argues that the initial stage begins as a departure from the deictic use of the second person, and expands its referential scope that is originally not indicated by the pronoun as in (2.30). In a later stage, the second person singular loses its deictic function and the boundary of reference is blurred, as in (2.31). (2.30) 如果你到 Ruguo ni dao If 2s CPA 雲南是一 yunnan shi yi Yunnan be one 風情和 fengqing han armous-feeling and. 雲南走走，你就會發現， yunnan zouzou ni jiu hui faxian Yunnan visit 2s just will find 個頗具民族 ge po ju minzu CL rather possess nation 異國情調的地方。 yiguo qingdiao de difang exotic atmosphere NOM place. ‘If you pay a visit to Yunnan province, you will find that it is a place of folk-custom and exoticism.’ (2.31) 大家你看看我，我看看你，還是 Dajia ni kan kan wo wo kan kan ni haishi Everyone 2s see see 1s 1s see see 2s still 不發一語。 bufayiyu not-say-one-word ‘Everyone stares at each other in bewilderment, and no one says a word.’ (Chen 2009: 209) The referents indicated by the ni in (2.30) refer impersonally to a group of people who visit Yunnan, while the ni in (2.31) becomes non-referring and only retains the ‘interpersonal function’ in describing the communicative interaction. Aside from the non-canonical categories proposed above, Chinese second person singular shows mismatch with its intended referent. The mismatched ni could refer to the speaker himself/herself, to a third person, or to a group of people as can be seen in (2.32), (2.33), and (2.34), respectively. (2.32) 你花工夫 Ni hua gongfu 2s spend time  了吧，他們 le ba tamen CRS PRT 3pl. 了， le CRS 又 you again. 成績 chengji grade 說 shuo say. 考了 kao le test CRS 你是 ni shi 2s be. 好 hao good 抄 chao copy. 一點 yidian a-bit 的。 de NOM 21.

(32) 唉， ai PRT. 真 zhen really. 不 bu NEG. 知 zhi know. 該怎麼說 gai zenme shuo should how say. 才 cai just. 好。 hao good. ‘You make effort and get better grades. Then, they say that you copied other’ ideas. (I) don’t know what to say.’ (Yang 2011: 44-45) (2.33) 他 Ta 3s 不 bu NEG  你 ni you 人 ren people  你要 ni 2s. 恨誰呢? 我們的日子 hen shei ne women de rizi hate who PRT 1pl ASS day 是過得還好嗎？ shi guo de hai hao ma COP EXP ASP still good PRT 不能去跟別人比呀， bu neng qu gen bieren bi ya NEG can go with others compare PRT 比人氣死人， bi ren qi si ren compare people angry die people 知道自己是誰阿。 yao zhidao ziji shi shei a have-to know self be who PRT. ‘He can hate who? Our lives are still pretty good, aren’t we? You cannot be competitive. Compete with others won’t make people happy. You have to know who you are.’ (Wang 2008: 60) (2.34) . 那個 Nage That 看見 kanjian see. 人 ren person 我們， women 1pl. 眼睛 yanjing eye 正 zheng upright. 長 chang grow 眼都 yan dou eye all. 在頭上， zai tou shang at head above 不瞧你 bu qiao ni NEG look 2s. 一下。 yixia one-time. ‘The person is arrogant. When (s/he) comes across us on the street, he pretends not to see you.’ (Yang 2011: 53) In (2.32), the speaker complains that people suspect the validity of her grade despite her diligence. Under this context, the second person singular, ni ‘you’, does not refer to the addressee but to the speaker herself, who encounters the disappointing situation. In (2.33), the intended referent is the absent third party. It is used as if people to whom the speaker is addressing were present so that the speaker could directly express his/her annoyance to her/him (Chen 2009: 203). The use of ni pulls the third party 22.

(33) closer, so the speaker can express his/her anger toward the addressee—as if the third party was present. Furthermore, Wang (2008: 60) proposes the circumstance for the mismatched use in (2.33)—it occurs when the referent cannot be directly pointed out in the discourse situation. The non-egocentric way of reference in (2.32) and (2.33) would lower the speaker’s involvement, shorten the psychological distance between the speaker and the addressee (Chen 2009: 203), show vividness, invite subjective experience (Hsiao 2011: 805), and appeal to hearer’s sympathy of the speaker’s situation (Yang 2011: 49). As for the ni ‘you’ in (2.34), it could refer either to the addressee and the speaker as suggested by Yang (2011: 53) or to the third party whom the speaker encounters in a street. Either interpretation is acceptable and would display the speaker’s intention of inviting hearers’ subjective experiences to the described event and of receiving hearers’ sympathy. According to the above review of Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990) and Biq (1991), there are five categories in the non-canonical use of the second person pronouns. They are impersonal, vague, dramatic, metalinguistic and projective use, all of which could be found in Chinese. Their distributions in the two Chinese speech genres under our investigation will be discussed in chapter 3. 2.2. 3 Third Person Pronouns 2.2.3.1 Third Person Singular Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990: 746-747) contend that the third person singular, s/he could be used vaguely. They suggest that ‘a non-deictic singular third person pronoun must be anchored either anaphorically or cataphorically’. The example (2.35) and (2.36) illustrate their statements. (2.35)  If anyone wants to succeed, he must work hard. (2.36)  He who wants to succeed in life must work hard. (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 746) The third person singular refers anaphorically to the noun, anyone in (2.35) and refers cataphorically to people introduced by the relative clause—who wants to succeed in life in (2.36). Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990: 746) argue that third person singular is vague but never impersonal since the canonical use of third person pronoun for other-reference indicates the exclusion of speaker or addressee, i.e. [-S, -A], while the impersonal use specifies the inclusion of everyone, i.e. [+S, +A]. However, Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990: 746) further note that ‘in an anaphoric context like (2.35), a third person singular (especially he, as generally conceived) is interpreted impersonally’. Through the anaphoric anchor point, the he in (2.35) refers to anyone who may become successful 23.

(34) through his hard work, and the ‘anaphoric anchoring’ (1990:747) is required for the impersonal and vague interpretation. Without the anchoring, the third person singular would carry the deictic meaning as in (2.37). (2.37)  He must work hard to succeed. (Kitagawa & Lehrer 1990: 1990:747) According to Kitagawa & Lehrer (1990:746), the third person singular in (2.37) refers to a specific person who could be found in the discourse context, while the he in (2.35) refers to anyone by means of the anaphoric anchor point. Nevertheless, it is worth exploring why the he in (2.35) is taken as an atypical use, i.e. impersonal use, but not a typical use, i.e. anaphoric use. We propose that it could be due to the indefinite anyone that precedes the third person singular. That is, the interpretation of the impersonal third person singular occurs when it is preceded by the indefinite pronouns such as everyone or anyone. For instance, Wang (2007) offers an English example of the third person singular which receives the impersonal reading. (2.38)  Ever since he found a need to communicate, man has been the speaking animal. (Wang 2007: 68) The co-referential noun man, which refers to all human being, gives rise to the impersonal interpretation of the he. If the noun in the example is not man or human being, the third person singular he would not carry the impersonal meaning. It is thus argued in the current study that the occurrence of impersonal third personal pronoun like (2.38) is extremely limited because it requires two conditions—the co-occurrence of the nouns, such as anyone or man, and the anaphoric or cataphoric relation. In a real speech situation, the third personal singular more often displays other atypical uses instead of occurring under the two constrained conditions. Wu (2003) and Biq & Huang (2011) propose numerous non-canonical cases in spoken Chinese. Wu (2003) focuses the investigation on the non-canonical referential and non-referential uses of the third person singular. She proposes that the non-canonical use is motivated by three factors—syntactic, discursive and expressive functions. These factors, especially the latter two, have the most influence on the atypical use of Chinese ta ‘she/he/it’. The non-referential metalinguistic use, for instance, is argued. 24.

(35) to occur for an expressive function.10 The example of a metalinguistic ta is given in (2.39). (2.39) 希望就是說在維持市場 Xiwang jiushishuo zai weichi shichang Wish that-is-to-say at maintain market 自由公平的秩序下面， ziyou gongping de zhixu xiamian freedom equality NOM order under 中油和台塑這樣的供應商 zhongyou han taisu zheyang de gongyingshang Zhongyou and Taisu this NOM wholesalers  是不該去干涉他下游通路 shi bu gai qu ganshe ta xiayoutonglu be NEG should go interfere 3s down-river route 怎麼做，因為畢竟怎麼樣的爭鬥， zenme zuo yinwei bijing zenmeyang de zheng dou how do because after-all how NOM fight 其實到最後得利的是消費者。 qishi dao zuihou deli de shi xiaofeizhe actually till last benefit NOM be consumer ‘(We) hope that under the circumstance of maintaining the free and fair order of the market, gasoline wholesalers like Zhongyou and Taisu should not interfere with (ta) how the retailers do, for, however they fight, the consumers are the winners at all.’ (Wu 2003: 86) (2.40) 那之前 Na zhiqian That before 那銀行 na yinhang that bank. 他有 ta 3s 會 hui will. you have 通知 tongzhi notify. 一家銀行，他 yi jia yinhang ta one CL bank 3s 我。 wo 1s. 要 yao want. 辦， ban do. ‘Then, some time ago, (ta) there was a bank, and my child wanted to apply for a student card, and the bank informed me.’ (Wu 2003: 136) It is pointed out that the ta in (2.39) and (2.40) is non-propositional and syntactically and semantically redundant. In (2.39), Wu (2003) argues that the singular ta cannot refer to the gasoline wholesalers who are plural, nor does it receive stress in speech. 10. Four types of metalinguistic use are proposed by Wu (2003). They are (i) ta plus presentative verb, such as ta you ‘ta has’, and ta chuxian ‘ta appears’(p.90), (ii) ta plus noun phrase like ta xianzai de xueli ceyan ‘ta the Xueli Ceyan now’(p.91), (iii) verb-ta-ge plus adverb or noun like shui ta ge san tian san ye ‘to sleep for three days and nights’(p.93), and (iv) gei-ta construction like you dian gei ta xiang bu qilai shuo ‘somehow I don’t remember’(p.98). 25.

(36) Besides, the xiayou tonglu ‘down-river route’ in (2.39) is clearly ‘self-evidently identifiable’ (p.87) since it could logically refer back to the preceding noun phrase, i.e. the gasoline wholesales without the occurrence of ta. Therefore, the ta here is motivated by an expressive cause. It is used to show a sense of distance between the gasoline wholesalers and the retailers and to display the speaker’s objective stance toward the event. As for the metalinguistic ta in (2.40), Wang (2007) disagrees with Wu (2003) that ta in (2.40) is non-propositional. Rather, Wang (2007) argues that the first ta in (2.40) is co-referential with the second ta, i.e. the speaker’s child. In the beginning of the sentence, the speaker might want to mention her kid first, but changed her mind to bring up the bank, and then she switched the focus back to her child ta, who wanted to apply for a credit card. The psychological competition of saying the child or the bank first is unknown. Wang (2007) further suggests that it would be helpful to see if there is a pause between the first ta and a bank. This would determine whether the first ta is redundant and used metalinguistically with the bank as proposed by Wu (2003) or it is, like Wang (2007) argues, the competition of the noun sequences, i.e. the bank and the child. Biq & Huang (2011) present a different categorization in their examination of the non-canonical uses of the spoken Chinese. They distinguish the non-canonical pronouns into eight types, cataphoric, generic, redundant, non-referential, inferred, extended, multiple references, and coherence marker (Biq & Huang 2011: 425). Some of these types are similar to Wu’s (2003) classification but are different in category titles, so these would be pointed out in the following review. The cataphoric use occurs in a restrictive clause (Chang & Fang 1996: 178, Biq & Huang 2011: 419) and it can refer to the following noun. The ta refers cataphorically to nage ren ‘that person’. (2.41)  你給他 Ni gei ta 2s give 3s 那個人， nage ren that person. 治好偏頭痛 zhi hao piantoutong cure good migraine 昨天又來 zuotian you lai yesterday again come. 的 de NOM 了。 le CRS. ‘The one you cure him of migraine came yesterday.’ (Biq & Huang 2011: 419) The generic use refers to an indefinite or non-specific referent in a discourse. The following example shows that the third person singular refers to any child who fell. 11 11. The third person singular is indicated as TA in Biq & Huang (2011). For the consistency, the current study would adopt ta in the following review. 26.