@article{ART003099172},
author={Lee, Jee Won},
title={‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types},
journal={The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea},
issn={1226-4822},
year={2024},
volume={32},
number={2},
pages={31-57}
TY - JOUR
AU - Lee, Jee Won
TI - ‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types
JO - The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea
PY - 2024
VL - 32
IS - 2
PB - The Sociolinguistic Society Of Korea
SP - 31
EP - 57
SN - 1226-4822
AB - Using a corpus of Chinese natural discourse, this study examined the occurrence of 'ma' questions and their responses from a quantitative perspective, as well as how 'ma' questions and their responses are expressed and coordinated with respect to the epistemic asymmetry between speakers. The analysis of the tendencies in the types of responses to 'ma' questions in real conversations by syntactic and semantic characteristics showed that 'ma' questions and their response types do not follow a grammatical pattern, but rather certain usage patterns in specific linguistic environments depending on the speaker's level of confidence in a particular piece of information, and in each context there are different types of interrogative sentences and sentence structures to choose from, and different acceptable responses. When the structure and form of the interrogative sentence indicate a strong positive or negative confidence in the speaker's propositional content, the rate of “type-conforming responses” is much higher than otherwise. This suggests that the different types of responses are not used in a grammatically determined pattern in conversation, but are selected from among the responses that the question constraints allow.
KW - 'ma' question;response;usage pattern;epistemic asymmetry;conversation analysis;discourse-functional linguistics
DO -
UR -
ER -
Lee, Jee Won. (2024). ‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 32(2), 31-57.
Lee, Jee Won. 2024, "‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types", The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, vol.32, no.2 pp.31-57.
Lee, Jee Won "‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types" The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 32.2 pp.31-57 (2024) : 31.
Lee, Jee Won. ‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types. 2024; 32(2), 31-57.
Lee, Jee Won. "‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types" The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 32, no.2 (2024) : 31-57.
Lee, Jee Won. ‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 32(2), 31-57.
Lee, Jee Won. ‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea. 2024; 32(2) 31-57.
Lee, Jee Won. ‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types. 2024; 32(2), 31-57.
Lee, Jee Won. "‘Ma’ Questions and their Response Types" The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 32, no.2 (2024) : 31-57.
