A semantic study of modal words in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

Generating Chinese sentences require three kinds of words, including object words (lexical item), attribute words and relational words. Modal words (modal auxiliaries) are nature words which express a speaker’s attitude. They help to generate modal sentences and express modal meanings. In terms of modal meanings, modal words can be divided into three categories, expressing necessity, expectation, and disjunction respectively. Different types of modal words can be discovered by data mining and their semantic strength can be calculated. In the use of modal words the relationship between speaker’s identity and power should be considered.