Asymmetric Functional Overlap in a Contact Variety: Clause-Final Hor and Ba in Singapore Mandarin

This study examines the synchronic relationship between clause-final hor and ba in Singapore Mandarin, two discourse particles that overlap functionally but differ in their pragmatic profiles. Using spontaneous multi-party data from televised variety programs, we combine an exploratory corpus description with a bidirectional substitution task involving Singapore Mandarin speakers with linguistic training. Substitutability was asymmetric across the sampled contexts: hor was accepted in a larger share of ba contexts than ba was in hor contexts. Among substitutions judged at least marginally acceptable, the clearest pragmatic effect was a change in perceived forcefulness. Replacing hor with ba tended to make an utterance softer or less forceful, whereas replacing ba with hor tended to make it stronger or more forceful. The findings show that functional overlap between discourse particles can be directionally structured, and suggest that the centrality of each particle’s pragmatic contribution to the interactional action may help explain patterns of substitutability. More generally, bidirectional substitution provides a way to reveal pragmatic differentiation that corpus distribution alone may not capture.