With relevance theory and coherence theory as the theoretical basis, this paper studies the pragmatic function of Chinese-Utterance final particles: a, ba and ne and claims that the discourse function of ne is stronger than a and ba. In other words, the modality meaning of a and ba is stronger than ne. This paper also studies the reason why a, ba and ne have different pragmatic functions and concludes that the meaning of ne is mainly the meaning of mood, ne has a longer history and the grammaticalization of ne is more complete while a and ba have obvious modality meaning; they have a shorter history than ne as mood particles and their grammaticalization still continues.

Lee, Jee Won. 2017. “The Use and Discourse-Pragmatic Function of wo buzhidao in Naturally Occurring Mandarin Chinese Conversation”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 25(1). 167~192. This study investigates several aspects of Chinese (wo) buzhidao using both qualitative and quantitative methods, including its distributional properties and discourse-pragmatic functions in conversational contexts. This study has found that (wo) buzhidao occurs in conversational environments other than in reply to information questions and carries more interactive and social implications than had been previously proposed by previous studies. First, (wo) buzhidao marks the speaker’s uncertainty and concerns about the truth of the proposition expressed. Second, (wo) buzhidao constructs the speaker’s neutral position by disattending opinions, assessments, or troubles. Third, (wo) buzhidao avoids an explicit disagreement. The use of (wo) buzhidao as a stance marker allows the speaker to convey his/her consideration for the hearer’s face, and it can help to achieve a range of interactional goals. Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese employ (wo) buzhidao in conjunction with other interactive strategies to organize their speech via their recipient enabling mutual intersubjectivity.