On The Semantics Of Chinese Additive Particle "Ye"

The particle ye has been studied under different frameworks such as semantics,pragmatics and cognitive linguistics,with the main focus on the semantics,pragmatic context and mood property of ye.Ye is always treated as an adverb or a Chinese particle(a counterpart of English particles too and also)in the previous studies.And I treat ye as an additive particle in this paper.And in the previous studies of ye,there remains some ambiguous sentences and questionable sentences with ye.Why is the classical example “Miss Wang teaches maths too” deviant in isolation? How to avoid such ambiguity of ye-sentences like “Miss Wang teaches maths too”? Why is the example “They are old,Zhang Hai is 75 years old,and Li Gang is also 80 years old” infelicitous? All of these questions will be given appropriate explanations in this paper.Moreover,this paper presents a new angle for the analysis of the similarity of ye with the Argumentation Theory proposed by Winterstein(2011),for Winterstein has successfully handled the similarity of too under the framework of argumentation.Additionally,the co-orientation condition and the binary judgement put forward by Winterstein are also adopted into the analysis of some other semantic properties of ye.And in order to enrich the study of the similarity of ye,the polarity of ye is discussed in comparison with that of too and either.The research on the similarity of ye not only deepens the understanding of the similarity of ye,but also enriches the application of the Argumentation Theory.The Argumentation Theory is not only applicable to the analysis of the similarity of too,but also suitable for the analysis of the similarity of Chinese additive particles like ye.And the analysis of the similarity of ye under the framework of the Argumentation Theory has provided the appropriate explanations to the ambiguous and questionable sentences with ye in the previous studies.Moreover,the similarity of ye refers to the similar orientation between the antecedent sentence and the host sentence instead ofthe lexical identity.And the similarity of ye connects closely with the presupposition of ye.If there exists no similarity between the host and the antecedent,the presupposition of ye could not be satisfied.And the application of the quantifiers in the ye-sentences and the comparison between the polarity of ye and that of too/either have illustrated the necessity of the similar polarity between the host and the antecedent.Meanwhile,such research of the additive particle ye might also provide some enlightenment on the study of other Chinese additive particles such as hai and you.