台灣華語口語會話中語氣詞ou的語用功能分析

A Conversational Analysis on the Pragmatic Functions of the Taiwanese Mandarin Utterance-final Particle OU

本文針對台灣華語口語會話中的句末語氣詞ou，討論其核心意義，分析其語用功能，期能瞭解此語氣詞的用法，作為對外華語教學的參考。本研究以會話分析的方法，從口語語料中擷取語氣詞ou出現的話輪，觀察上下文的意義關連等語境信息，以理解說話者的動機及對話者互動過程，從而詮釋語氣詞ou的語法、語義、語用等功能。分析後發現語氣詞ou可依音高分為兩種，低音的ou具有將陳述句變為疑問句的語法功能，還能標示說話者的評價情態，表達對新事態意外，具「主觀性」，因而適用於「驚嘆、持疑」等言語行為；而高音的ou則標記說話者將其觀點延伸至受話者，表達說話者認為新事態有違受話者的預期，體現「互動主觀性」，因而可用於「提醒注意、警告」等言語行為。

This paper aims to the utterance-final particle ou of Taiwanese Mandarin with its core meanings and pragmatic functions investigated. With conversational analysis, utterances attached by ou are observed and adjacency pairs examined with the contextual information. Hopefully, the analysis results may serve as some guidelines for the teaching of Mandarin final particles. It is found that there are two kinds of ou distinguished by pitch. The low-pitch ou not only has the syntactic function of changing a declarative into an interrogative but also marks the evaluative modality with which speaker expresses unexpectedness with subjectivity in performing speech acts such as exclaiming or doubting. On the other hand, the high-pitch ou represents speaker’s inter-subjectivity by presupposing listener’s unexpectedness toward the new situation when used in speech acts such as reminding or warning.