The Chinese Particle Le

Ever since the start of Chinese linguistic studies, the description of the Chinese particle LE has remained elusive. The classification has evolved from a listing of sentences and the discussion of contrastive pairs to a more context and discourse-oriented analysis. The development in recent years of inferential models and situation semantics has opened the way for a renewed study of the use of the Chinese particle LE. This book discusses the Chinese data from a 'mental space' perspective and finally reveals the role so-called Chinese 'sentence LE' plays in the construction and maintenance of discourse.

1. Introduction 2. Previous Studies 3. The Particle Le and the Study of Language Use 4. The Historical Development of the Particle Le 5. Action Picture Stories 6. Children's Stories 7. Conversations 8. Discussion 9. Theoretical Implications