Readers 读者
Taiwanese question particles
台湾话的疑问分词
Robert L. Cheng 郑良伟
Abstract 摘要
Two types of yes-no questions are recognizable in Taiwanese: the assertive and the non-assertive. Semantically the former presupposes a statement or view already expressed or understood to be asserted whereas the latter presupposes other modalities. Syntactically the former is characterized by the alternative question that uses sī 'be' conjoined with its negation -sī 'not be' as the higher predicates, as in sī--sī 'is-not-is' or 'is it or is it not the case that ...?' The latter is formed by using other modal verbs such as ū 'existing', beh 'willing', ē 'likely', etc., as predicates on the same level of sentence.
Journal of Chinese Linguistics volume 5 (ISSN 0091-3723)
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