Title

Asking questions in context: Evidence, social relations and question-form choice in Mandarin Chinese conversation

Abstract

Mandarin Chinese provides multiple grammatical forms for asking questions, such as disjunctive questions, tag questions, and particle questions. These forms can be used to ask about the same issue, but their felicity depends on the context in which they are used. This dissertation provides a systematic empirical investigation of how speakers choose among question forms in different contexts. It focuses on how this choice is shaped by the type and strength of evidence available to the speaker and by the social relation between the interlocutors.

The dissertation begins with an exploratory pilot study using written elicitation with conversation boards to examine how the choice of question forms varies across the contextual factors under investigation. The results suggest that different question forms are associated with different evidential and social conditions. These differences appear to reflect their interactional functions, including seeking information, requesting confirmation, signaling a need for a definite answer, and displaying different types and degrees of epistemic stance or leaving the speaker’s stance relatively open. Motivated by these findings, Experiment I and Experiment II use controlled spoken elicitation to investigate the choice of question forms across a broader range of evidential and social conditions. The two experiments systematically vary the type of evidence available to the speaker and the social relation between the interlocutors, while extending the scenario set and examining questions about both the addressee and a third person. By collecting naturally produced spoken responses, the experiments provide insight into the distribution and use of question forms in conversational interaction.

Together, the two experiments test and refine the preliminary generalizations identified in the pilot study and provide a clearer account of how different question forms function across contexts. To provide a theoretical account of these patterns, the dissertation also develops a dynamic discourse model that represents the context shaping the speaker’s choice of question form and the discourse update introduced by the question. The model captures how the evidence available to the speaker shapes their epistemic state and guides their choice of question form, as well as how different forms contribute differently to the progression of a conversation.

Exam committee

• Dr. Nancy Hedberg (Supervisor)
• Dr. Ashley Farris-Trimble (Chair)
• Dr. Johannes Heim (External examiner, University of Aberdeen)