A Pragmatic Study of the Usages of Chinese Parenthetical Expression ‘wo shuo shen me lai zhe’

Abstract

Parenthetical expressions are non-negligible in second language learning. By making a questionnaire survey and doing online interviews to 20 foreign students who are intermediate and advanced Chinese learners in China, the writer tried to find answers to two questions about a special Chinese parenthetical expression ‘wo shuo shen me lai zhe’ . The writer pointed out what the literal meaning and implicature of this PE were and how Gicean cooperative principle and the theory of implicature could analyze it. Finally, possible methods of teaching and learning Chinese PEs were proposed in the paper.