Chinese sentence-final particles (SFPs) are widely used in spoken Chinese and have been analyzed from different theoretical perspectives. Traditionally included in the class of 助词 zhùcí 'auxiliary words', modern Chinese SFPs have been labelled by Chinese scholars in different ways as 语气词 yǔqìcí 'modal words', 语气助词 yǔqì zhucí 'modal auxiliary words' and 语未助词 yǔwèi zhùcí 'sentence-final auxiliary words'. Qi (2003) highlights the terminological inconsistency listing the various works where the topic is discussed and these labels appear. Qi also specifies that it is not uncommon for these authors to use different terms in different grammar books as in the case of Lü Shuxiang's works published in 1942, 1979, 1980. The authoritative monolingual dictionary of modern Chinese, Xiandai hanyu cidian (XHC), uses the term yǔqì zhucí for SFPs and includes them in the broad category of particles. These items are defined as "particular functional words with the lowest independence and the least concrete meaning" (XHC 2016: 1713).
The inclusion of particles within the broad class of zhùcí is justified by the properties these items and other particles share, i.e. the impossibility for them to occur independently in the sentence, their lack of lexical meaning, their position, attached to other elements, and their neutral tone. Nevertheless, according to Qi (2003), yǔqìcí should be distinguished from zhùcí because (i) the former occur at the end of the sentence, while auxiliary words may also occur after words or phrases within the sentence; (ii) although two or more auxiliary words cannot occur together, this is not the case with modal particles; (iii) some auxiliary words have lexical meanings, whereas modal particles do not.
Not only are the terms used to label Chinese SFPs different, but the perspectives from which these items have been investigated also evidence a variety of approaches, from pragmatic and syntactic analyses to semantic and phonetic accounts. According to Chu (2016: 20), "Except for the 'change of state' le and the interrogative ma, the other Mandarin SFPs are less tangible in their 'meanings' or 'functions' and are thus treated in different analyses with radically different results".
In general, these morphemes are 'phonologically small elements' that occur in sentence final position to express a variety of discourse functions and meanings that relate to the speaker's attitude and perspective. In summarizing SFP features, Simpson (2014) writes: (i) since they are speaker-oriented they can occur only in the matrix clause; (ii) more than one SFP can occur in a single sentence; (iii) SFPs tend to be prosodically integrated into the sentence they are part of.
According to another account (Huang & Shi 2016), two types of SFP exist: the first comprises the particles that can only appear at the end of a main clause, whereas particles of the second type can also occur at the end of subordinate clauses. The latter include particles such as 了 le, to be distinguished from aspectual, post-verbal le, and 来着 laizhe, which are not found in the first type of SFP. When such a particle is attached to a clause, whether main or subordinate, the proposition of the clause combines with the particle to create a new proposition (Huang & Shi 2016: 34). Most particles belong to the first type, including those investigated in this study.
The study aims to investigate the influence of a speaker's dialectal background on their selection of SFPs in Mandarin Chinese. Two types of sentence completion questionnaires were submitted to 86 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at Fuzhou University, roughly half of whom use – to varying degrees – one of the Chinese varieties spoken in Fujian Province. Data collected from the 72 valid questionnaires were analyzed with results showing that dialectal background is a significant factor in the close-ended item type questionnaire.
