The modal particle ma 嘛: theoretical frames, analysis and interpretive perspectives

This article sets out to provide a semantic and pragmatic account of the modal particle ma 嘛, endeavouring to put into light new aspects in its function which, at present, remain widely unexplored in the literature. It presents an analysis of the particle ma by interrogating a written and a spoken corpus, showing how the semantic and the pragmatic levels are tightly interweaved in the functioning of ma: the results supported my hypothesis that the particle is plausibly a marker of interpersonal evidentiality (IE), a category set up by Tantucci (2013), used to signal a socially acknowledged piece of information, playing a fundamental role in the expression of politeness by safeguarding the interlocutors’ face; consequently, ma is always used with information that has an active or accessible status in the interlocutors’ mind and that is always pragmatically salient, independently of its position (at the end or inside the sentence), marking a Topic or a Focus. The particle performs pragmatic functions close to the ones of discourse markers since it increases the relevance of the marked information to the context, therefore also playing a contributing role in the coherence of discourse

Book Review: Chengyu: Caratteristiche e apprendimento delle espressioni idiomatiche del cinese

Book review: Sergio Conti. Chengyu. Caratteristiche e apprendimento delle espressioni idiomatiche del cinese [Chengyu: Characteristics and learning of Chinese idioms]

(Inter)subjectivity and information structure: The pragmatics of left and right peripheries in spoken Mandarin

This study provides a novel data-driven analytic model for the study of the utterance peripheries. The model operationalises the relationship between information structure and (inter)subjectivity, uncovering how speakers simultaneously manage cognitive and social aspects of communication. Using a sample of 21 spontaneous telephone conversations between Mandarin native speakers (CallFriend Mandarin Corpus), all aboutness and framing topics (Lambrecht, 1994; Frascarelli, 2017) occurring at the utterance right periphery were identified and compared with an equivalent number of topics produced at the left periphery. The study provides a multifactorial analysis including referent activation (Chafe, 1987), subjectivity (Du Bois, 2007) and intersubjectivity (Tantucci and Wang, 2018), demonstrating that multiple dimensions must be taken into account to grasp the differences between the two peripheries of the utterance. In fact, rather than differing in activation profiles or presence of (inter)subjectivity, they are characterized by distinct combinations of these dimensions. Specifically, right-peripheral topics frequently display the simultaneous presence of active referents, a subjective stance conveyed by the speaker – most frequently negative – and a peripheral marker of intersubjectivity. The complex interaction between these dimensions suggests that right peripheries serve as a key site for negotiating social relationships, aligning perspectives, and managing politeness

Encoding Motion Events in Mandarin and Italian: Theoretical Issues, Teaching Materials, and Implications for CFL/CSL Teaching

The encoding of motion events shows significant cross-linguistic variation: Mandarin, a satellite-framed language, encodes path information in secondary elements, whereas Italian, a verb-framed language, lexicalizes path directly within verbal roots. This typological difference, rooted in Talmy (2000)’s framework, poses challenges for Italian-speaking learners in acquiring Mandarin's primary device for motion encoding, directional verbal complexes (DVCs). These constructions are sequences of verbal morphemes that encode multiple motion components simultaneously, including manner of motion, path, and perspective. In contrast, Italian strategies for motion encoding tend to emphasize trajectory or path over the manner of motion. Through an analysis of CFL (Chinese as a Foreign Language) textbooks and grammars used in three main Italian universities, this study identifies critical gaps, including insufficient explanations of the syntactic and–more notably–semantic constraints impacting DVC word order, object positioning, and aspectual marking. Findings indicate that a comparative, typologically aware approach – leveraging Italian constructions with similar functions such as syntagmatic verbs – could bridge these gaps, fostering a more accurate understanding of DVCs. The study recommends enhancing teaching materials to better represent the full syntactic and semantic range of DVCs, aiding learners in mastering the complexities of Chinese motion event encoding

Verbal engagement in doctor–patient interaction: Resonance in Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine

This study provides a framework for assessing doctors' verbal engagement during medical consultations. It quantifies doctors' degrees of resonance (Du Bois, 2014), a form of interactional alignment (Pickering and Garrod, 2021) that occurs when speakers imitate and re-use words and constructions uttered by their interlocutors. Resonance often involves creativity and active participation in others’ speech, overtly signalling that what they said is relevant for continuing the interaction (Tantucci and Wang, 2021). We looked at Chinese naturalistic consultations and explored whether resonance produced by Chinese doctors with a background in Western medicine (WM) differs from Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) doctors. Our data includes 60 online medical consultations and shows that TCM doctors’ resonance is remarkably higher. This reflected stronger involvement in patients’ speech in combination with other interactional indicators of engagement such as sentence peripheral markers of intersubjectivity (Tantucci, 2021) and strategies of relevance acknowledgement (Tantucci, 2023). The pragmatics of TCM doctors is also characterised by a more directive language geared towards a healthy lifestyle, whereas WM doctors favour etiological assessment, with a predominant use of assertive speech acts

The modal particle ma 嘛: theoretical frames, analysis and interpretive perspectives

This article sets out to provide a semantic and pragmatic account of the modal particle ma 嘛, endeavouring to put into light new aspects in its function which, at present, remain widely unexplored in the literature. It presents an analysis of the particle ma by interrogating a written and a spoken corpus, showing how the semantic and the pragmatic levels are tightly interweaved in the functioning of ma: the results supported my hypothesis that the particle is plausibly a marker of interpersonal evidentiality (IE), a category set up by Tantucci (2013), used to signal a socially acknowledged piece of information, playing a fundamental role in the expression of politeness by safeguarding the interlocutors’ face; consequently, ma is always used with information that has an active or accessible status in the interlocutors’ mind and that is always pragmatically salient, independently of its position (at the end or inside the sentence), marking a Topic or a Focus. The particle performs pragmatic functions close to the ones of discourse markers since it increases the relevance of the marked information to the context, therefore also playing a contributing role in the coherence of discourse

Situation-bound utterances in Chinese as a foreign language: the effectiveness of the identification task

本文探讨了一个词汇学习任务——识别任务在对外汉语中对于情境专用语（situation-bound utterances，简称SBU）记忆的有效性。参加实验的为本科二至三年级的意大利汉语学习者，分为实验组和对照组。目标SBU是通过之前提交给意大利语母语者、汉语母语者及意大利汉语学习者的言谈情境填充问卷 （discourse completion questionnaire）来选取的。在实验处理的过程中，实验组被提供了6个特定情境，并被要求从8个短对话中找出相应的SBU。随后，我们对实验组和对照组都进行了两次后测。测试结果的统计分析表明，无论从即时角度还是从纵向角度来看，该任务对参与者回忆目标SBU的能力都有显著影响。数据也表明，参与者的学习时间长短或目标SBU的语种特殊性 （linguistic specificity）对这一特定词汇学习任务的效力没有显著影响，L1或 L2中某种SBU存在与否，即文化特殊性（cultural specificity），可能才是学习者能够成功地回忆出该SBU的关键因素。This paper investigates the effectiveness of the identification task on the retention of situation-bound utterances (SBUs) in Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The participants were Italian CFL learners with different lengths of learning experience, divided into an experimental and a control group. The target SBUs were selected by means of a discourse completion questionnaire previously submitted to Italian and Chinese native speakers and Italian CFL learners. During the treatment, the experimental group was provided with six communicative functions and was asked to identify the corresponding SBUs from eight short dialogues. Subsequently, a posttest was administered to both the experimental and the control groups. Overall, the statistical analysis of the test results suggests a significant effect of the task on the participants’ ability to recall the target SBUs, both from an immediate and a longitudinal perspective. However, the data also suggest that, while the participants’ length of learning experience and minor linguistic or cultural specificities of the target formulae did not significantly influence the effectiveness of this specific vocabulary learning task, the presence vs. absence of the SBUs in either the L1 or the L2 might be a crucial factor for their successful recall

L'analisi linguistica e letteraria (2022). Vol. 3

The current study addresses the pragmatic marker (nĭ) zhīdào ma/ba (你) 知道吗/吧 (you know), aiming to identify the (a)symmetries between (ni) zhidao ma and (ni) zhidao ba used in utterance-final position in oral interactions. The research questions include aspects mostly unaccounted for by previous studies, including the marker’s position in the turn, the S(peaker)’s gender, the H(earer)’s response or reaction to the utterance, and the relationship between S and H. Based on the results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses of 173 occurrences extracted from 12 hours of spontaneous telephone conversations, significant differences set apart the two variants, possibly due to the particles’ original pragmatic meanings and resulting in a tendential division of labour. Most prominently, the ma-variant tends to occur in turn-final position and to trigger more explicit responses, while the ba-variant mostly occurs in turn-medial position to maintain S’s turn and H’s attention