When constructions meet context: The polysemy of Mandarin hai revisited
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This study investigates the synchronic polysemy of the Mandarin construction hai. Drawing on authentic and contextualized examples of spoken language, I propose that hai prototypically functions as an indicator that the ensuing proposition refers back to some relevant presupposition in prior discourse, which is either explicitly stated or inferable. With this contrastive alignment of two propositions, the reading of hai as ‘temporal continuance’ emerges naturally by way of pragmatic inferencing. In other words, I demonstrate that the various meanings identified in previous studies arise from an interplay between hai’s schematic sense and discourse pragmatics. This study presents not only a unified account for the synchronic polysemy of hai, but also has significance for the study of constructions in discourse. |