문말조사 “呢”의 의미고찰

Abstract

This paper reviews the existing viewpoint of the Sentence-Final Particle “ne” and examines its inherent meaning. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: “Ne” has been generally regarded as a Interrogative particle. It is true that “ne” often appears in interrogative sentences, but it does not mean that “ne” is responsible for questioning function. Actually the interrogative pronoun in a sentence or the interrogative structure of sentence itself paly the questioning function. Therefore, “ne” can not be a interrogative modal particle. Some scholars have also argued that “ne” is a continuous mark of continuity. It is true that “ne” often associates with words such as “zhengzai”, “zai”, “zhe”, etc, but it can not appear in all sentences that indicate continuation. Therefore, it can not be called a continuous mark. In modern Chinese, there are a lot of sentence-final particles, and they are divided into four meaning categories according to the combination level: Aspect marker> Modality marker> Interrogative or imperative marker> speaker's attitude and emotion marker. Among them, “ne” represents a strong conviction of the speaker. Therefore, it belongs to Evidentiality and can be named as a certainty marker.