A Study of the Focus Expression Function of the Modal Adverb “yòu” in Modern Chinese

DOI

10.2991/meici-18.2018.164How to use a DOI?

Keywords

yòu; Focus; Accent; High Line; Low Line; Voice Length

Abstract

The main point of view in the academia is that “yòu” is generally lightly read when expressing refutation and negative tone adverbs with a focus. This paper uses experimental phonetics to test 10 subjects “wǒ yòu méi huā nǐ de qián, guǎn nà me duō!”, “nǐ zěn me yòu lái le ?” The pitch frequency percentage values of each of the two sentences were analyzed, pointing out that “yòu” tends to be the focus in negation, rebuttal tone or rhetorical tone. When “yòu” is the focus, its pragmatic function is to serve as the narrow focus of the whole sentence to accentuate the pragmatic function of negative presupposition and counter-question. The paper also proves that with the semantic blur of “yòu”, its tendency to focus is smaller.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shuang Dai
AU  - Chunhong Qi
PY  - 2018/12
DA  - 2018/12
TI  - A Study of the Focus Expression Function of the Modal Adverb “yòu” in Modern Chinese
BT  - Proceedings of the 2018 8th International Conference on Management, Education and Information (MEICI 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 823
EP  - 829
SN  - 1951-6851
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/meici-18.2018.164
DO  - 10.2991/meici-18.2018.164
ID  - Dai2018/12
ER  -