A sentence-final particle (SFP, henceforth) is an optional component for a sentence in Cantonese. Traditionally an SFP contains at least one independent segment. The present study proposes that for sentences without a segmental SFP, sentencefinal intonation can act as a segmentless SFP. Systematical acoustic experiment was conducted based on this assumption. Two cross-cutting dichotomies were c...

This paper proposes two syntactic positions for the wide range of Cantonese sentence-final particles that occur in the CP domain. The first position that I argue for is identified with the Force head (SFP1) of the C space (à la Rizzi 1997) which hosts particles that express speech acts and speaker-oriented modality. The second position (SFP2) is an iterative head located lower than the higher T...

This paper gives a thorough investigation into Mandarin sentence-final particles (henceforth SFPs). First I induce core grammatical functions and semantic interpretations of SFPs. Based on Rizzi’s (1997) Split CP hypothesis, I make some modifications to accommodate Mandarin SFPs and map them onto separate functional heads within a proper hierarchy. I also examine some empirical evidence of head...

Sentence-final particles serve an important role in spoken Japanese, because they express the speaker's mental attitudes toward a proposition and/or an interlocutor. They are acquired at early ages and occur very frequently in everyday conversation. However, there has been little proposal for a computational model of the acquisition of sentence-final particles. In this paper, we report on a stu...

Language is primarily constituted by action and interaction based on sensorimotor information. This paper demonstrates the nature of subjectivity and intersubjectivity through the neural mechanism and typological evidence of sentence-final particles from East Asian languages and extends to the discussion of the relationship between them. I propose that intersubjecivity is a kind of embedded or ...

To investigate the interaction between tone and intonation on production of sentence-final syllables effects a specific type characters, i.e. particles (SFPs) in Nanjing dialect, acoustic analyses were carried out current study. Participants asked to produce sentences under four conditions: (1) SFPs interrogative sentences; (2) declarative (3) homophones (4) sentences. The productions analyzed ...