The so-called "rhetorical interrogation" in Mandarin Chinese
关于现代汉语的反问句
Viviane Alleton 艾乐桐

Abstract 摘要
Interrogative sentences are not always used as actual requests for information. “Rhetorical interrogations” are interrogations that have assertive value; this displacement of modality is connected with an inversion of negation. In Chinese, this kind of construction, called fanwenju (FWJ) has two types of markers. Some markers are specific of the medium used, such as, in the spoken form, intonation patterns, or, in the written form, the use of specific adverbs (e.g. nandao “hard to say”). There are also syntactic markers, such as the position of the negation, whose function is more systematic than in European languages. I study three types of sequences. (1) In negative sentences, the adverbs jiu “thus, soon”, ye “also, even”, hai “still” usually precede the negation. The reverse is acceptable only if the sentence may be understood as FWJ. (2) In predicates including an auxiliary verb, the most usual place for the negation is before the auxiliary. The negation before the second verb usually denotes a FWJ. (3) Although the sequence “negation + dei (must)” is considered by most authors as ungrammatical, it is currently used with a FWJ meaning. In this paper I also discuss the most frequent uses of FWJ in the different types of interrogative sentences in Chinese, i.e. tezhi wenti “Question-word Question”, shifei wenti “Intonation/particle Question” and fanfu wenti "A-not-A Question".

提问的句式不一定表示疑问。比如反问句并不是提出问题，而是用问句的形式强调肯定或否定的意义。反问句的形式和意义是相反的，如果是否定式，强调的是肯定的意思；如果是肯定式则反之。汉语中反问句有两种表达方式。有些和欧洲语言相似，即说话中运用语调的变化，而书写上则加上副词（例如，“难道”）。还有一些在结构上具有明显的反问标志。这些都与否定词的位置有关系。我在本文中也谈到在问句的不同种类，特指问句，是非问句和反复问句，中反问句常用形式的用法。

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