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The Conventional Implicature of Dōub(Dōu2,Dōu3): On Semantics of Dōub from the Perspective of Discourse Analysis

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Book cover Chinese Lexical Semantics (CLSW 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11173))

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Abstract

In existing studies dōub (dōu2, dōu3) is a polarity-marker and a universal quantifier which sometimes expresses having done or been and has an emphatic function. This paper argues that marking-a-polarity, universal quantification and expressing having done or been are all conversational implicatures or context meanings of dōub sentences. And as a kind of generalized conversational implicature the emphatic function which belongs to dōub construction is drawing from a plausible inference. But it is not the conventional meaning of dōub. The conventional implicature of dōub indicates that the speaker has made a judgment on the state of affairs described by a proposition, and he/she believes that the possibility of the state of affairs is inferior-to-expectation (or normal). As a kind of rule meaning it is a non-truth conditional, procedural and pragmatic meaning. But it is different from an ordinary rule meaning that is an explicit, literal, objective and truth conditional meaning because it is subjective, non-truth conditional and implicit. And it is different from a conversational implicature because it is non-cancellable.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I think this view is about the same thing with my idea that dōub sentences do not necessarily mark a polarity. Limited to space, no expansion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Overseas Education College of Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China

    Hua Zhong

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  1. Hua Zhong
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Correspondence to Hua Zhong .

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  1. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Jia-Fei Hong

  2. Peking University, Beijing, China

    Qi Su

  3. National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Jiun-Shiung Wu

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Zhong, H. (2018). The Conventional Implicature of Dōub(Dōu2,Dōu3): On Semantics of Dōub from the Perspective of Discourse Analysis. In: Hong, JF., Su, Q., Wu, JS. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11173. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04015-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04015-4_4

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-04015-4

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