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Part of
Enabling Human Conduct: Studies of talk-in-interaction in honor of Emanuel A. Schegloff
Edited by Geoffrey Raymond, Gene H. Lerner and John Heritage
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 273] 2017
► pp. 273–297

Particles and epistemics

Convergences and divergences between English and Mandarin

This chapter examines three particles that have epistemic functions in English and Mandarin: turn-initial ‘oh’ in English, turn-initial ‘ou’ in Mandarin, and turn-final ‘a’ in Mandarin. It is argued that while ou and oh converge in registering a ‘change of state’ of information, orientation or awareness, turn-final a is used to register a contrast between oneself and an interlocutor, which often implicates, and reflexively embodies, the speaker’s pre-existing knowledge, perspective, expectation or experience in relation to the matter at issue. This “contrast-invoking” usage of turn-final ‘a’ can be mobilized to problematize the action of the previous speaker by marking it as counter to the speaker’s expectation, thus converging with oh-prefacing in this particular interactional usage despite their normal functional divide. The chapter ends with a consideration of putatively universal pragmatic needs that are carried out using distinctive resources, and a distinctive division of labor among resources, in the two languages.

Keywords: Particles, epistemics, stance, English, Mandarin
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Oh in Anglo-American English
  • 3.Initial Ou in Mandarin Chinese
  • 4.Final A in Mandarin Chinese
  • 5.The convergences
    • 5.1Responding to a question while indexing the question’s inappositeness or redundancy
    • 5.2Oh-prefaced and a-finalized responses as escalated disagreement
    • 5.3Oh-prefaced and a-finalized responses as independently arrived at
  • 6.Concluding discussion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
  • Abbreviations
Published online: 24 May 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.273.14wu
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