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Published in:
2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Manifestation of Certainty in Semantics:
The Case of Yídìng, Kěndìng and Dǔdìng in Mandarin Chinese
Author : Jiun-Shiung Wu
Published in: Chinese Lexical Semantics
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
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This paper examines three modal adverbials in Mandarin Chinese: yídìng, kěndìng and dǔdìng. These three lexical entries can all express strong epistemic necessity or intensification. However, denoting intensification, kěndìng and dǔdìng have an additional semantic requirement: they both require that there be at least one alternative to the proposition they present. They are different in that the speaker uses kěndìng to ascertain the truth of a proposition it takes, although all the alternatives are potentially true, while dǔdìng is used to assert the speaker’s certainty that only the proposition dǔdìng takes is true. Concerning certainty, two cases are demonstrated here. For yídìng, certainty is expressed implicitly, because certainty manifests itself through the speaker’s attitude. However, for kěndìng and dǔdìng, certainty is revealed explicitly, since (part of) the semantics of these two lexical items is certainty.