Syntactic Rules and Pragmatic Principles Restricting the Usage of the Chinese Character Men
The usage and the function of men in Modern Chinese have always been a hot topic in the study of the Chinese category of number,but no consensus has been reached.We argue that only by accurately situating the issues in their proper contexts can we create the conditions to fundamentally solve the problem.In this paper,we propose that the usage of men is the result of the combined influence of rigid grammatical rules and flexible pragmatic principles.The former determines the grammatical conditions for the obligatory or non-obligatory use of men,while the latter defines the pragmatic contexts in which the use of men is optional.Furthermore,the use of men,when it is not obligatory,is primarily driven by pragmatic factors,with the purpose of highlighting and emphasizing the plural meaning of the noun.This analytical framework can eliminate the ambiguous generalization such as"tendency"frequently employed in the discussion about this issue,providing a more thorough analysis and a more profound theoretical explanation for related linguistic phenomena.
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