Intensification and Modal Necessity in Mandarin Chinese

This book addresses intensification and modal necessity in Mandarin Chinese. Intensification is used in this book to describe the speakers emphasis on a proposition, because, by emphasizing on a proposition, the speaker intensifies the degree of his/her confidence and affirmativeness toward the truth of a proposition, cf. the distinction between weaker and stronger. Modal necessity discussed in this book refers either to the speakers certainty regarding the truth of an inference, judgment or stipulation, that is, epistemic necessity or to the speakers certainty concerning the obligatoriness of a proposition, based on rules or regulations, i.e., deontic necessity. This book examines a series of lexical items in Mandarin Chinese that express either intensification or modal necessity, provides a unified semantics and also presents how these lexical items are semantically distinct. Intensification and Modal Necessity in Mandarin Chinese is aimed at instructors, researchers and post-graduate students of Chinese Linguistics.