Formation of Modern Chinese speech-quotativenǐ shuō‘you say’ and feedback-seekingnǐ shuō‘you tell me’

Abstract

In Modern Chinese, four construction types involving nǐ shuō may be distinguished. In this study, it is argued that the prosodically unseparated speech-quotative nǐ shuō (S1) develops from the prosodically separated speech-quotation nǐ shuō (S3) through a hypothesized complementation pathway which makes the nǐ shuō predicate the matrix clause of the following content clause. Prosodically unseparated feedback-seeking nǐ shuō (S2), in contrast, develops from a prosodically separated feedback-seeking nǐ shuō (S4) via a hypothesized conjoining pathway which involves the loss of a prosodic gap between the feedback-seeking nǐ shuō predicate and the clause that it occurs with. Contrary to the common assumption in the literature, S2 does not develop from S1. Meaning difference influences the selection of each of the two pathways, and in the source construction when an S3 or S4 is prosodically separated from the clause it occurs with, it is not the matrix clause of the latter. The account given in this study may also be used to explain the formation of English parenthetical predicate you say.