The Intersubjectivity of the Sentence-Final Ba in Discourse

The study of the sentence-final particle ba, which mainly connotes uncertainty or mitigation, is a major challenge in modern Chinese grammar. Based on the speaker's subjective emotion and attitude, ba reflects his or her “attention” to “the self.” However, existent studies do not touch upon “attention” to the addressee, who constitutes the second but not secondary part in the communicative process. The intersubjectivity of ba includes attention to the “cognitive state” and social self' of the addressee. This study intends to point out the interpersonal and pragmatic functions of ba, in that the sentence-final particle could not only organize the discourse but also contribute to the management of interpersonal relationship according to the corpus.