A mitigator in Mandarin: the sentence-final particle ba (吧)

4.1 Introduction

In this section, we test the predictions concerning the non-modal nature of ba listed in the previous section. The results show that ba can indeed not be a modal element, as it occurs in contexts in which modal elements would not be possible.

4.2 Ba and basic illocution

Subjective modal elements are generally restricted to declarative sentences (Hengeveld 1989: 138) and to a lesser extent also occur in interrogative sentences. They may occur in these sentence types as these contain a propositional content. This is different for directive speech acts, which do not transmit information but project behavior. Subjective epistemic expressions, therefore, cannot occur in directives (for further discussion see Section 4.5). If ba were a modal element of uncertainty, as claimed in the literature, ba would have to be restricted to declaratives and interrogatives; however, ba may occur in sentences with all basic illocutions encountered in Mandarin Chinese.

The basic illocutions identified in Mandarin are declarative, interrogative, directive, exclamative, and prohibitive, which have distinct intonational features. Declarative is characterized by a flat intonation (Huang and Liao 2011/2015: 99) and a fall at the end of an utterance (Duanmu 2000: 235), while the interrogative intonation usually has an overall higher phrase curve, higher strengths of sentence final tones, and a final-tone-dependent mechanism (Yuan 2006, Liu et al. 2016). Although directives usually have a low tone range similar to declaratives, they enjoy several features distinguishable from declaratives. Directives are restricted to first and second person if explicitly expressed; directives usually have bare verbs; the only aspect marker that can occur in directives is the progressive marker zhe. ^[4] In addition, a stronger command is distinguished by an overall forceful tone as well as a short and intense sentence-final tone (He and Jing 1992: 96). Prohibitive requires the use of negative words such as bie, bu, and bu-yao with a stressed intonation, where bie is a negative particle used exclusively in prohibitives (Li and Thompson 1981: 455). Finally, exclamative, in addition to a high frequency of degree adverbs, has a distinct prosodic contour characterized by one or multiple strong stress positions, a wide pitch range, and a low ending boundary (Chen 2007).

In our corpus, ba occurs in all five sentence types, as exemplified in (3). ^[5]

(3a) is a declarative in which the presence of ba makes the statement sound less assertive and thus leaves more space for the addressee to disagree. (3b) is an interrogative in which the use of ba makes the question sound more consultative. The first clause in (3c) is a directive in which the speaker is pushing a woman to tell the truth. The use of ba reduces the harshness of this command. (3d) is an exclamative in which the speaker is complaining angrily. The presence of ba mitigates the negativity of the speaker’s complaint. (3e) is a prohibitive in which bie indicates that the speaker wants the addressee to stop. By using ba, the speaker makes the prohibition sound less forceful. The sentences above illustrate the combinability of ba with all kinds of illocutions, which shows that ba cannot be an epistemic marker of uncertainty. Besides, in comparison with their counterpart sentences without ba, the illocutionary force of each sentence with ba is mitigated, which brings about the effect that the addressee is given more space either to disagree or to refuse to comply, if necessary.

In order to explore the combinatory status of ba with different illocutions, we manually annotated each instance in our sub-corpus and obtained the absolute frequency and percentage of each illocution combined with ba, as shown in the second column in Table 2. These frequencies and percentages, however, might be correlated with the overall distribution of illocutions within the sub-corpus; therefore, we also investigated the relative percentage of each illocution in the CCL modern Mandarin corpus, regardless of the presence or absence of ba. Due to the accessibility of the text-type data in the CCL corpus, we randomly selected 200 sentences from each of the spoken and literary sub-corpora to uncover the overall distribution of illocutions in Mandarin. We manually annotated those 400 sentences, which resulted in 362 in total after the irrelevant ones such as repetitions and typos were removed. We then calculated the frequencies and percentages per illocution type among these 362 sentences, as seen in column three of Table 2. Finally, this overall frequency per illocution type, regardless of the presence or absence of ba, is divided by the absolute percentage per illocution type with ba in our sub-corpus. The rates and ranks are given in the fourth column.

Table 2 shows important differences in the overall presence of basic illocutions, of which the declarative is the highest in frequency. On an even distribution, it would be expected that ba would most frequently occur with the declarative. However, as shown in the fourth column, the directive use of ba, not the declarative use, is dominant in our sub-corpus, to the extent that ba is used in directives over seven times more often than would be expected on an even distribution. This reveals that the primary use of ba is not modal, as mentioned above, epistemic modality targets a proposition as expressed in a declarative or interrogative sentence, whereas directives are proposals that involve the non-verbal exchange of goods-and-services (objects or actions) that cannot be affirmed or denied (Halliday 1994: 68–71). Hence, in the case of directives, it would be impossible for the speaker to use ba as a modal to show his/her epistemic commitment toward a proposal. Rather, ba is a mitigator as can be seen from the comparison between the directives with and without ba. With the presence of ba, the illocutionary force of directives is softened; without ba, the directives sound more forceful. As the basic function of a directive is to issue an order or a request, which poses a potential threat to the negative face of the addressee (Brown and Levinson 1978), the speaker uses ba as a mitigating strategy to soften this face-threatening effect, thus leaving space for the addressee to refuse to comply.

The second most frequent illocution with which ba combines is the interrogative. There is a small difference between the frequency of interrogatives with ba and the frequency of interrogatives overall. Though less face threatening, interrogatives are somewhat similar to directives in being requests for information and might therefore also be expected to be mitigated. This also holds for prohibitives, the third most frequent illocution, whose strong imposing force tends to be softened by the speaker. As directives, interrogatives and prohibitives are demanding in nature, either for an action or for a piece of information, and it is very likely for them to be mitigated in order to soften the imposition on the addressee. The illocutions that ba combines with least frequently are declaratives and exclamatives. In comparison with other illocutions, declaratives and exclamatives are informative in nature, either conveying a statement or expressing strong emotions. These two illocutions are consequently less face threatening than the other illocutions and thus less in need of mitigation.

Owing to the low frequencies of exclamatives and prohibitives and the lack of available raw data of more text types, what is presented in column five of Table 2 may not reflect the actual rate of ba per illocution. Nevertheless, the substantial differences are still revealing, especially the overwhelmingly higher frequency of ba in directives, which shows that its directive use, not its declarative use, is basic and primary. This is also confirmed by diachronic research conducted by Tantucci (2017), who points out that in recent history ba has witnessed a gradual shift from the directive use to the declarative use. This reveals that the use of the mitigator in directives is the original one and has diachronically expanded to declaratives, functioning to reduce the assertive force of the declarative.

Crosslinguistically, a mitigator can modify a specific illocution or all kinds of illocutions. As argued in Section 2, in FDG a mitigator that co-occurs with all possible illocution types is treated as an operator at the layer of the discourse act, thus modifying the discourse act as a whole. As shown in (3), the presence of ba reduces the force of all types of illocutions. Therefore, ba may be analyzed as operating at the discourse act layer rather than at the layer of the illocution. This stands in contrast to much of the existing literature, in which ba is often regarded as modifying some specific illocutionary force, such as estimation (Wang 1943/1985: 174, Li 1924/2007:274–6), soliciting agreement (Li and Thompson 1981: 307–11), suggestion (Lü 1999: 56–57, Wiedenhof 2015: 241–2), etc. Li (2006: 21–71) comes closest to our position, as she argues that ba has a unified function of marking a low degree of commitment in different sentence types, focusing on “ba’s semantic contributions” (2006: 28). However, she equals the strength of the speaker’s intention to the sentence force. She maintains that ba marks “a low degree of strength with respect to the speaker’s intention to have an action carried out when occurring in imperatives, as well as in various types of questions” (2006: 36). In our view, what’s being weakened by the presence of ba is not the speaker’s intention but the illocutionary force concerned. For instance, in directives, the speaker uses ba not to indicate his/her weak intention to have the action carried out but to indicate his/her openness to negotiate the strong intention of having the action carried out. In other words, what’s being modified is not the intention itself but the strong directive force for the sake of reducing the unwelcome perlocutionary effects that a directive might bring along.

In this section, we have shown that ba behaves differently from modals in two respects in terms of its combinability with different types of illocutions. First, modals have restrictions as to which types of illocutions they can occur with; however, there are no such restrictions on ba as it can combine freely with any type of illocution. Second, modals are expected to occur most frequently in declaratives; however, our data show that the most frequent illocution in which ba occurs is the directive.

4.3 Ba and modality

In the literature, ba is considered to express the subjective epistemic modality of uncertainty (e.g., Wang 1943/1985: 174, Hu 1981: 416, Zhu 1999: 234–41), which will be argued in this section to be a wrong analysis, as ba cannot be a modal if it itself can co-occur with all kinds of modals, including modals of subjective epistemic modality.

In our sub-corpus, there are 235 declarative sentences with ba, among which 95 co-occur with one or two modal elements, listed in Table 3. Among the four types of modalities distinguished in FDG (see Section 2), subjective epistemic modality and objective epistemic modality are the most difficult ones to classify. We adopt Olbertz and Dall’Aglio Hattnher’s (2018: 139) content question test to distinguish subjective modality from objective modality in our sub-corpus. Subjective modalities occur in propositional contents, which, as such, cannot be located in space or time, while objective modalities occur in episodes, which can be located in space or time. We use content question words of time such as shen-me shi-hou “when” or content words of space such as zai na-er or shen-me di-fang “where” to test each declarative sentence in which an epistemic modal occurs. If the sentence becomes unacceptable after the insertion of the relevant question words, the modal expression is categorized as expressing subjective epistemic modality as in (4).

If the sentence is acceptable, the modal word is considered to be an objective epistemic modal, as is the case in (5).

To distinguish between event-oriented, and participant-oriented modality, it is necessary to determine whether the modal expression involves/concerns external circumstances or participants. In (6a), it involves the external circumstances. In this case, a general rule requires the summing up rather than the experience and the lessons themselves; therefore, ying-gai “should” expresses an event-oriented modality. In (6b), the understanding involves the ability of the participant ni-men “you”, so hui “will” expresses a participant-oriented modality.

On the basis of these criteria, we classified modal expressions in the 95 declarative sentences and calculated their frequencies. ^[7] The results are presented in Table 3.

As Table 3 shows, ba co-occurs with all types of modalities. The most frequent one is subjective epistemic modality, especially with the expressions da-gai, ye-xu, and ke-neng.

As we have shown in example (2), modal elements may co-occur when they belong to different classes, but not when they belong to the same class. What Table 3 shows, however, is that ba may co-occur with any type of modality, so this means that it cannot itself belong to any of these classes.

Examples of combinations of ba with all other types of modalities are shown in (7). Da-gai in (7a) expresses subjective epistemic modality, yi-ding in (7b) expresses objective epistemic modality; gai in (7c) event-oriented modality; and hui in (7d) participant-oriented modality.

In the sub-corpus, there are five cases of ba occurring with two modal elements in a single declarative sentence. Since each type of modality pertains to a different layer in FDG (Table 1), it is theoretically legitimate for them to co-occur. In (8a), ba co-occurs with the subjective modal da-gai and the event-oriented modal neng, whereas in (8b) it co-occurs with the objective epistemic modal ken-ding and the participant-oriented modal hui.

In our corpus, there are no co-occurrences of three modal elements with ba. Nevertheless, the fact that ba can co-occur with all types of modalities and even with more than one type of modality in a single sentence demonstrates that ba cannot itself be a modal, since, if it were a modal, the combination with at least one of these types would lead to ungrammaticality.

There is an even stronger argument to support this observation. If the particle ba and a modal expression are both grammatical, their co-occurrence would even be more severely restricted, as grammatical elements belonging to the same class constitute a paradigm. Among the class of subjective epistemic modals in Mandarin, there are two that are grammatical in nature: da-gai and ye-xu. ^[8]

If ba, as a grammatical element, were to express subjective epistemic modality, it would share its categorical grammatical features with da-gai and ye-xu. Therefore, they would fall into the same paradigm and would thus be mutually exclusive in a single sentence. The fact that there are 21 cases of co-occurrence of ba with da-gai and 19 with ye-xu shows that there is no restriction for ba to co-occur with subjective epistemic modality. Examples are given in (9a) and (9b):

In all, we must conclude that ba cannot be a modal marker, due to its co-occurrence with modal elements of all possible types. The uncertainty reading of the sentence in which ba occurs is not due to an inherent modal property of ba but to the mitigating effect that ba brings about when it interacts with the illocutionary force of the sentence. We will come back to this effect in Sections 4.4 and 5.4.

4.4 Ba in expressions with strong truth commitment

If ba were a modal marker of uncertainty (Hu 1981: 416, Lu 1984: 334, Chu 1998: 139, Zhou 2009: 16–22, Zhao and Sun 2015: 121–32), then a speaker could use ba to show he/she is uncertain about what he/she is asserting. However, ba can occur in sentences in which the speaker displays a high degree of confidence in the truth of the statement (Tantucci 2017). In (10), the village head is highly confident that Chen Yue-Qing is reluctant to sell the orchard because no one would sell something that is very profitable.

There are even cases in which the speaker explicitly expresses high confidence by using expressions such as yi-ding and ken-ding, as shown in (7b) above and (11a) below. In these cases, ba cannot encode uncertainty because it would be contradictory for the speaker to explicitly express high confidence in what he/she said and at the same time present it as being uncertain. This can be confirmed by replacing ba in (11a) by an expression of subjective possibility such as ye-xu “perhaps”, which would render the sentence unacceptable, as shown in (11b).

The ungrammaticality of (11b) is due to the clash between the modal expression yi-ding “certainly” and the modal expression ye-xu “perhaps”, which expresses the opposite modal value. The fact that ba does not have such an effect shows that it cannot itself be modal.

However, it is not the case that ba can occur in all declaratives in which the speaker expresses strong confidence. The typical example is a bare assertion concerning the speaker’s own past behavior, as in (12a).

In (12a), the speaker’s going to Beijing is presented as a fact, leaving no space for negotiation. The addition of ba to such a bare assertion makes the sentence unacceptable, as in (12b), because when one shows less than full commitment toward his/her own actions, one calls himself/herself into question. However, if (12b) is changed into a rhetorical question, it becomes acceptable, as in (12c). Similar to (10), ba in (12c) is legitimate despite the fact that the speaker has full confidence in what’s being stated. The difference between (12a) and (12c) is that in (12c), the speaker leaves space for negotiation with the addressee, while this is not the case in (12a).

The fact that the speaker uses ba even when he/she has high confidence in what’s being asserted reveals that ba is not used to encode the speaker’s real uncertainty but instead is used strategically to achieve pragmatic purposes, functioning in the same way as hedges and pragmatic markers across languages. Hence, to express uncertainty is not ba’s inherent nature; rather, when the illocutionary force of an assertion is mitigated, the assertion consequently sounds less certain as this involves a weakening of the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition. To put it more simply, the uncertainty reading of the sentence is just the mitigating effect that ba brings about in an assertion.

As mentioned in Section 4.2, Li (2006: 21–71) argues that ba marks a low degree of the assertive force, which seems to be similar to our argument that ba has a mitigating function in declaratives. However, what she means by “a low degree” is that “with ba the speaker is not wholly certain about the factual status of the proposition and makes a weak assertion” (2006: 60). This shows that her approach reflects a modal perspective rather than one in which ba’s pragmatic mitigating functions are recognized.

4.5 Ba in non-propositional utterances

Ba not only occurs in sentences with strong epistemic commitment but also in non-propositional sentences. The most frequent co-occurrence is with hao “okay”. For instance,

As mentioned in Section 4.2, human interactions involve two kinds of exchange, an exchange of propositions and an exchange of proposals. The former refers to statements and questions that can be “argued about something that can be affirmed or denied, and also doubted, contradicted, insisted on, accepted with reservation, qualified, tempered, regretted and so on” (Halliday 1994: 70), whereas the latter refers to offers and commands that cannot be affirmed or denied (Halliday 1994: 70). A proposition can be related to epistemic uncertainty but a proposal cannot. For instance, in English, propositional (14) is correct, but it is awkward to say (15).

In Mandarin, hao is actional since it reacts to a proposal, not to a propositional content. In (13), hao ba is a reaction to the father’s suggestion to swing, rather than an epistemic agreement as to whether the statement is true or not. It is not grammatical to use (16) in response to the father’s encouragement in the context given in (13).

Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008: 146–9) point out that yes is propositional in nature and can be used to substitute for full propositional contents. Hence, it is used in reaction to a statement or a question but cannot be used to react to a directive because a directive evokes an SoA rather than a propositional content. The reaction to a directive would be an actional one like okay. ^[9] This means that it is incorrect for Zhou (2009:16–22), Chu (1998:132–9), and Zhao and Sun (2015:121–32) to claim that ba is used in directives to show that the speaker is unsure of or dubious about the enactment of the speech act. Actually, when ba occurs with actional hao “okay”, it mitigates the willingness to carry out the required action. In (13), without ba, the sentence means “okay”, implying I would like to do that; with ba, it means “alright”, implying I will do that but I am somewhat reluctant.

4.6 Ba and other sentence-final particles

As introduced in Section 2, FDG recognizes four levels, two of which are relevant in our discussions, namely, the representational level and the interpersonal level. The former is concerned with semantics, while the latter deals with pragmatics. The hierarchical layout presented in Table 1 predicts the actual ordering of linguistic elements pertaining to different layers and levels. If ba is modal, it expresses semantic categories and thus pertains to the representational level. In this section, based on ba’s positioning with respect to other sentence-final particles, we will argue that this cannot be the case.

Mandarin Chinese has a rich inventory of sentence-final particles. Two distinguishing features of Mandarin sentence-final particles are that they have a very high frequency of occurrence in daily conversations and that they can occur in clusters which have a highly restricted linear order. The most basic sentence-final particles are the following six: de (的), le (了), ne (呢), ba (吧), ma (吗), and a (啊). They have different degrees of scope over the content of the sentence and can thus cluster hierarchically at the end of a sentence. We searched all the logically possible permutations of these six particles in the CCL corpus (see Fang and Hengeveld n.d.), finding that the maximal combination of those basic particles is three in a single sentence. The most frequent combination is de le a, which is phonetically fused into de la (的啦) due to the adjacency of two vowels. The second most frequent one is de le ma and the third is de le ba. The third combination is illustrated in (17).

De in (17) is a modal marker of certainty, which pertains to the layer of the propositional content at the representational level. Le is a mirative marker at the layer of the communicated content at the interpersonal level (Fang 2018). The representational level is lower than the interpersonal level, which is iconically reflected in the ordering of de and le. The sequence de le ba shows that ba has scope over both le and de and thus occupies a layer higher than the layer at the interpersonal level that le pertains to. The fact that ba is located at the interpersonal level, not at the representational level, invalidates the claim that ba is a modal marker; instead, it validates our argument that ba is a pragmatic marker.

Then the question arises as to which layer ba pertains to at the interpersonal level. The two layers higher than the communicated content are the layer of the illocution and the layer of the discourse act, as shown in Table 1. As mentioned in Section 2, the difference between an operator at the layer of the illocution and an operator at the layer of discourse act is that the former accounts for grammatical emphasis and mitigation of a specific illocution or a limited range of illocutions, whereas the latter can combine with all types of illocutions, thus reinforcing or mitigating the discourse act as a whole. Accordingly, ba is an operator at the layer of the discourse act, which can combine with all kinds of illocutions (see Section 4.2) and has a mitigating effect on any of the illocutions that it occurs with.

5.1 Introduction

In the preceding section, we have shown, using a variety of tests, that ba cannot be analyzed as a modal element. In this section, we will show that ba should instead be analyzed as having a generalized mitigating function, which acquires specific effects depending on the context in which it occurs. Since these varying and multiple contextual meanings of ba are specifically dependent on the kind of speech act in which they occur, we organize this section in terms of illocutionary values. For each of these, we show how the type of speech act interacts with the general mitigating function of ba in producing a specific perlocutionary effect. The illocutionary values that we will discuss are directive (Section 5.2), interrogative (Section 5.3), declarative (Section 5.4), exclamative (Section 5.5), and prohibitive (Section 5.6). We summarize our findings in Section 5.7.

5.2 Directives

Directives in Mandarin very often contain overt first person (wo; wo-men) and second person (ni; ni-men) pronouns, expressing, depending on the nature of the subject, imperative, and hortative illocutions. With a subject that includes the first person, they generally involve actions that the speaker expects to carry out without or with the addressee. The first person singular wo indicates that the speaker offers to do something on his/her own, as in (18a); the first person plural wo-men can indicate that the proposed action is inclusive or exclusive of the addressee. For instance, (18b) could mean that the speaker invites the addressee to do something together with him/her, or that the speaker tells the addressee which action he/she plans to carry out with another person present. With a subject in the second person, singular or plural, directives concern actions that the speaker or addressee(s) is/are expected to carry out, as in (18c) and (18d). Among the examples in (18), (18a), and (18b) are hortative, while (18c) and (18d) are imperative.

For Li and Thompson (1981: 307), ba in (18b) is used to solicit agreement. This, however, is not the correct characterization, as the speaker intends the addressee to carry out the action rather than to agree with a proposition. As argued in Section 4.5, ba for that same reason cannot be a modal here, nor is it a marker to encode the directive mood, as the removal of ba does not affect its directive illocution. The difference between the presence and absence of ba in (18) lies in the strength of the directive force of the utterances. Without ba, the sentences are a neutral order or exhortation, whereas with ba, the directive illocutionary force is softened, so that the speech act becomes negotiable and more suggestive. The fact that ba often co-occurs with expressions of politeness such as nin (an honorific pronoun, similar to vous in French, Qi and Zhu 2005: 62–67) also proves that ba is interpersonally/pragmatically oriented. The basic function of a directive is to order, request, or encourage the speaker or the addressee, sometimes together with the speaker, to perform some action. All these acts are potentially face threatening; therefore, in order to build up solidarity between interlocutors, a language must equip its users with means to be polite, to prevent loss of face, to leave room for the addressee to refuse or disagree, to make the addressee feel more comfortable, etc. (Hengeveld 1989: 131). In a directive speech act, mitigation, as remarked by Thaler (2012: 909), allows for the possibility of refusal and thus meets the addressee’s negative face needs, such as the desire for freedom of action and freedom from constraints imposed by others. Ba in Mandarin serves this very purpose.

In addition to softening a request or a command, ba can mitigate the intensity of negative emotions in directives. Both (19a) and (19b) are directives that involve the strong negative emotions on the part of the speaker. Compared with the directives without ba, the intensity of negative emotions in directives with ba is reduced.

In conclusion, we may say that the addition of ba to a directive sentence leads to the mitigation of the directive force of the sentence.

5.3 Interrogatives

The interrogatives in which ba occurs are often tag questions, which are more consultative than assertions and less inquisitive than polar questions. As observed by Dik (1989:257), in a tag question, the proposition is not being questioned and the nature of a declarative is altered in such a way that it sounds less assertive. Fraser (1980: 342) points out that tag questions are used by the speaker to mitigate the force of a speech act. In the case of polar questions, when their interrogative force is mitigated, they can become tag questions, which sound less inquisitive and more confirmation seeking.

We agree with Li and Thompson (1981: 307) that ba in interrogatives has the effect of soliciting agreement from the addressee, as in (20), but we differ from them in that we consider this effect to be a result of the general mitigating function of ba.

Without ba, (20) would be a straightforward question; with ba, the original interrogative force is mitigated such that the speaker is not asking a question but seeking confirmation from the addressee.

In addition to polar questions, there are three other types of questions in Mandarin, namely, WH questions, alternative questions, and verb-not-verb questions. WH questions request the filling of an information gap by using question words; alternative questions provide an either-or choice for the addressee, usually with the expression hai-shi “or”; and verb-not-verb questions likewise offer two alternatives of an event, but in this case one is the negative counterpart of the other.

When ba occurs in these question types, the interrogative force is reduced and the sentence conveys a more explicit invitation to provide an answer, as shown in the following examples (Zhu 1982: 211):

(21a) and (21b) are WH questions; (21c) is an alternative question, and (21d) is a verb-not-verb question. The presence of ba creates the perlocutionary effect of inviting the addressee more explicitly to respond to what has been proposed by the speaker.

No such examples are found in our sub-corpus, so we used the question key words italicized in (21) to search the modern corpus of CCL; we found instances of ba in WH questions and verb-not-verb questions such as (22a), (22b), and (22c) but not in alternative questions parallel to (21c), which apparently are somewhat less common.

From the above it can be concluded that the addition of ba to an interrogative sentence other than a polar one creates a more inviting speech act.

5.4 Declaratives

When the speaker makes a statement, he/she can present it as a fact as in (23a), leaving no space for negotiation, or add ba to reduce its assertive force as (23b), making it easier for the addressee to disagree (see Section 4.4).

When ba is added to a declarative with a regular falling intonation, it mitigates the assertiveness of the statement.

When the assertion is negative rather than neutral, as when it contains a criticism, it is expressed with a prolonged duration on the final syllable. When ba is used, this prolonged duration is then expressed on ba itself. The addition of ba reduces the the effect of a negative emotion. In (24a), the mother is blaming her son for not listening to her advice. With ba, the harshness of this criticism is softened. The same is true for (24b).

To summarize, the effects of ba in declaratives are as follows: when the sentence has a regular falling tone, ba mitigates the assertiveness of a statement; when the sentence has a falling and prolonged tone, ba mitigates a criticism.

5.5 Exclamatives

Mandarin exclamatives, expressing the speaker’s emotions (Gao 1986/2011: 584), can be made explicit by having exclamative markers such as demonstrative pronouns (zhe-me “like this”; na-me “like that”), adverbs (zhen “really”; hao “well”; tai “too”) as well as particles (like a), or can be free of any such explicit markers. In the latter case, the exclamative is recognized based on its prosodic contour. Zhao and Sun (2015: 124) claim that ba cannot occur in exclamatives because exclamatives are incompatible with ba’s semantic function of undetermined intention (uncertainty). It is true that epistemic modal expressions cannot occur in exclamatives. The fact that ba does occur, however, once again supports our argument that ba is not modal at all. In our sub-corpus, four exclamative instances with ba were found. In addition to example (3d) in Section 4.2, two more are exemplified in (25) below:

Exclamatives “express the speaker’s affective response to a situation” (Siemund 2015: 702). Both (25a) and (25b) have a specific prosodic contour to express strong negative emotions of anger by complaining and criticizing. According to phonetic experiments by Chen (2007: 50), the explicit marker tai “too” exhibits the highest pitch as well as a longer duration with the word right after it taking a lower pitch. Each sentence ends with a stressed and falling tone on ba. All four instances of ba in exclamatives in our sub-corpus express strong negative emotions of the speaker, as xiao-qi “mean” in (25a) and guo-fen “go too far” in (25b). In both situations, the speaker is expressing anger as he/she regards the situation as illegitimate, unfair, or contrary to what is right. As people have prescriptive norms about the appropriateness of emotions in particular situations, failure to regulate their emotions may lead to face damage and affective impoliteness as displaying anger at someone or doing so publicly may be regarded as being inappropriately or unfairly hurtful, causing an emotional reaction such as embarrassment or anger (Culpeper 2011: 58–59). Therefore, it is understandable for the speaker to use a mitigator to reduce the intensity of an emotion for the purpose of diminishing these undesired perlocutionary effects. In comparison with the absence of ba, the presence of ba softens the strong negative emotions, making them less harsh and offensive.

5.6 Prohibitives

Prohibitives are used to prohibit an addressee from carrying out the action evoked by the communicated content. In Mandarin, negative words such as bu-yao and bie “don’t” are used to express prohibitive meaning. Prohibitives are similar to directives in that they are both imperatives and can be perceived as challenging the negative face needs of the addressee. In order to make the prohibition less imposing and challenging, the speaker uses ba to mitigate the intensity of the prohibitive illocutionary force.

The effect of ba in prohibitions is thus to mitigate the strength of a prohibition.

5.7 Summary

In this section, we have described in some detail the specific mitigating effects of ba in different contexts. These effects may be summarized as follows:

1. DIR + ba: mitigate a directive speech act (offer, command, request, etc.)

2. Y/N INT + ba: solicit confirmation

3. WH-INT/ALT-INT/VnotV-INT + ba: invite a response

4. DECL + ba + a falling tone: mitigate assertiveness

5. DECL + ba with a falling and prolonged tone: mitigate criticism

6. EXCLAM + ba: reduce the harshness of the expression of a negative emotion

7. PROH + ba = mitigate the strength of a prohibition