The Sentence Initial Discourse Marker Nà 那 and Its Correlation with Sentence Final Particles

Abstract

The present study is based on the working hypothesis that the discourse marker (DM) na 那cannot freely co-occur with any sentence final particle (SFP). Indeed, the corpus-based analysis conducted, substantiated by means of statistical analyses, display the existence of a strong correlation between the DM na and ne 呢and a 啊, rather than other SFPs.

According to their functions in the discourse, it is assumed that the DM na is located in Spec,RespP (thus accounting for its sentence-initial position), whereas the SFPs ne and a are heads of RespP and Ground_SpeakerP respectively.

Furthermore, RespP and Ground_SpeakerP are assumed to be head-initial phrases, and movement of CP to their Spec is proposed, in order to comply with specific prosodical requirements.

In addition, data seem to support the proposal that multiple RespPs exists, accounting for the possibility to give the Addressee more than one instruction to interpret Speaker’s utterances.