Right Periphery Particle Hao (嚎) in Northeastern Mandarin:Layered Structure and Its Epistemic Stance in Talk-in-Interaction

This paper investigates the rightmost peripheral particle hao(嚎)in Northeastern Mandarin in the Onion Skin Model and stance-taking function in the framework of epistemic gradient, attempting at a unified account of hao-sentence in different discourse contexts. Hao is generally regarded as a sentence final particle (SFP),but this paper proposes, unlike ba(吧), ne (呢), and ma (吗),which are used as SFP, hao is an utterance/discourse final particle (UFP),which appears at the right periphery of utterance, and is used as one-word tag question in the talk-in-interaction. In addition, this paper proposes the hao-sentence is one of stance taking strategies, which positions or downgrades speaker himself in a subordinate epistemic stance in the meantime indexes the relative epistemic authority of the recipient. The function of hao-sentence is seeking confirmation, or seeking/moblizing agreement or supportive response from the recipient, depending on the different epistemic status of the interlocutors in the conversation. Hao-sentence is not so much requirement of information as seeking alignment in epistemic stance. In the narrative, which is an asymmetric type of conversation, hao used as pause particle (topic marker) exhibits the identical functions of epistemic ticker and engagement invitation.