The Complex System of Sentence-Final Particles in Mandarin Chinese

In recent years, the study of grammatical complexity has been marching forward, especially the idea of hidden complexity, which measures the optionality and context dependence of grammatical categories. Mandarin Chinese is notable for its grammar high in both overt and hidden complexities, and its sentence-final particles (SFP) system is prime example for such complexity. Many debates arose around the Mandarin SFPs, but few resulted in consensus. In this article, we will review previous discussions on the SFP system and build a complete summary and theoretic framework for it from a generative approach based on previous works. Most importantly, we propose a new hierarchical structure for the SFPs: AspMirP < FocP (< NomP < CondP) < ForceP < AttP1 < AttP2 < RespP. We will then test our theory with some commonly identified properties of SFPs and extreme cases.