知情状态与直陈语气词“嘛”

Knowledge status and the Chinese indicative sentence-final particle ma

语气词“嘛”标记说话人的知情状态，具体表现为说话人对听话人知情状态的预测，即认为听话人不知道自己应该知道的。“嘛”是一个直陈语气词，反映说话人对命题为真的强确定态度；“嘛”的强确定性以及附带的“不满”情绪都来源于它所标记的说话人的知情状态，这也显示了知情状态与认识情态之间的密切关系。从知情状态的角度研究汉语语气词的话语特点，有助于建立语气词的话语功能系统，进行不同语言／方言之间的类型比较。

Based on the existing studies, this article proposes that ma(嘛) is a sentence-final particle marking the addressor’s knowledge status, i.e. his assumption of the addressee’s knowledge status. The assumption can read 'that the addressee fails to know about what he should have known well'. The particle ma serves additionally as a marker of indicative mood. With the usage of ma, the addressor tends to express his emphatic certainty upon the truth of the proposition he declares. The conveyance of emphatic certainty, together with the implied 'dissatisfaction' when using ma, can directly be accounted for by the addressor’s knowledge status. This shows that knowledge status and epistemic modality are closely associated. Applying the approach of knowledge status could help systematize the discourse functions of the sophisticated Chinese sentence-final particle flora and facilitate the typological comparison among dialects and languages in this regard.