Abstract
Instead of traditionally treating certain modals with epistemic interpretation, we suggest that yinggai ‘should’ in Mandarin Chinese (MC) and asi ‘seemingly’ in Mayrinax Atayal (MA) be re-categorized as evidential modals. Under Cartography Approach (Cinque & Rizzi 2008, Tsai 2010, Tsai & Yang 2014), we try to build a hierarchical structure involving modals and mood particles, in terms of their interactions in these two languages. To distinguish evidential modals from others, several clausal constructions and elements are manipulated to figure out the compatibility of these modals in these environments. Following previous assumptions (Tang and Tang 1997, Hsin 2000, Palmer 2001, Butler 2003, Tsai 2010), we also confirm the existence of the rigid ordering among modals. We further claim that the various distributions and co-occurrences of modals signify this restricted ordering: Evidential > Epistemic > Deontic. Given that postulation, we could clearly separate evidential modals from epistemic ones. More importantly, we could re-define the essential interpretations of yinggai ‘should’ in MC and asi ‘seemingly’ in MA, and account for the inconsistency between yinggai ‘should’ and keneng ‘may’ in MC. This hierarchy can be further verified when we consider the interactions between modals and mood particles. Adopting concepts of previous studies (Tang 1998, Law 2002, Li 2006, Sybesma and Li 2007, Hsieh and Sybesma 2008, Paul 2014), we claim that mood particles are located at divergent positions under Split-CP Hypothesis (Cinque 1999, Rizzi 2004), where higher modals are presumed to block the upward movement of the relatively lower mood particle. Once the intervention effect takes place, the derivation in interrogatives is doom to crash. As a result, evidential expressions, including yinggai ‘should’, tingshuo ‘hearsay’ in MC, asi ‘seemingly’ and tal-an ‘it looks like…’ in MA are predicted to fail in yes/no questions, composed with ma in MC and quw in MA. Thanks to their relatively higher locations, only shi-bu-shi in outer A-not-A question of MC, and mood particle pisa’ in questions of MA are able to undergo movement to Force, regardless of the existence of evidential modals. Sentence final and non-final positioning of particles in MA also provides us another way to consider the formation of particles. Their free distributions are also influenced by the existence of higher modals.