Prosody and formation of Modern Chinese parenthetical CTMP ni xiang ‘you think’: A conjoining pathway account

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Modern Chinese parenthetical clause-taking mental predicate (CTMP) ni xiang (as in Ni xiang yinian huafei duoshao qian a? ‘You think (about it), how much money will it cost each year?’) is used to urge the hearer to give attention to the content of the clause with which it combines. It is argued that its formation does not follow a commonly accepted matrix clause pathway, in which a parenthetical CTMP develops from a corresponding matrix clause structure, because examples of parenthetical CTMP ni xiang appear more than 150 years earlier than examples of matrix clause ni xiang in Early Modern Chinese. It is hypothesized instead that a conjoining pathway leading from a prosodically separated CTMP ni xiang to a prosodically unseparated CTMP ni xiang may be adopted to account for the formation of parenthetical CTMP ni xiang and its various contextual properties.