Abstract
In fiction style, ‘wo zhidao (I know)’ is used frequently, and it is often followed by a clause as object. When the verb ‘zhidao (know)’ means ‘to have information about something’, ‘wo zhidao (I know)’ is mainly used in the persuading and request speech act to indicate that the input information is accessible, or to make the potential information explicit. When the meaning of ‘wo zhidao (I know)’ changes from ‘certain information exist in my mind’ to ‘I believe certain information’, the subjectivity of ‘wo zhidao (I know)’ enhanced, we can consider it as a strong assertive predicate. In this case, ‘wo zhidao (I know)’ is mainly used in the reproach or reprimanded context to express the speaker’s belief and attitude.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Chu, Z.: On the thinking way of grammar study in investigating tendentiousness based on diversity. Journal of Huazhong Normal University (Humanities and Social Sciences). 2, 90–94 (2011). (in Chinese)
Fang, M.: On Grammartical bleaching of the evidential and epistemic verb: from complement-taking predicates to pragmatic markers. Chinese Language. 6, 495–507 (2005)
Guo, Z.: The Weak Assertive Predicate ‘WO XIANG’ in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics Study 2, 43–47 (2004). (in Chinese)
Liu, L.: The discourse marker nizhidao(你知道). Chinese Language 5, 423–432 (2006). (in Chinese)
Meng, C., et al.: Chinese verb usage dictionary. The Commercial Press, Beijing (2003). (in Chinese)
Tao, H.: Phonological, grammatical, and discourse evidence for the emergence of zhidao constructions. Chinese Language 4, 291–302 (2003). (in Chinese)
Wang, D.: The co-variation between the semantics of the main verb and the nominalization of its predicative object. Chinese Language 4, 315–328 (2003). (in Chinese)
Zhang, J.: A semantic and pragmatic account of the differences between syntactic Characteristics of zhidao(知道)and renwei(认为). Contemporary Linguistics 3, 244–251 (2009). (in Chinese)
Zhou, B., Li, Y.: the evolution of discourse markers ‘you don’t know’. Chinese Linguistics 1, 78–84 (2014). (in Chinese)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wu, Z., Li, L., Liu, Z. (2015). The Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis of ‘wo zhidao (I know)’ in Fiction Style. In: Lu, Q., Gao, H. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9332. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27194-1_37
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27194-1_37
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27193-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27194-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)