It can do me1 (‘what’)?” — On the development of a Cantonese interrogative pronoun into a negative stance marker

Based on data obtained from Cantonesecorpora and interactions in everyday contexts, this paper identifies andanalyzes the range of pragmatic functions that the interrogative pronoun me1 has. Focusing on the subjective evaluative functions of me1 that go beyond interrogation, this present study attemptsto suggest the development pathway of me1 becoming a negative stance marker. Derivedfrom combining the interrogative pronoun mat1 ‘what’ and the general noun je5 ‘thing’ followed by phonological reduction, it isobserved that me1 (<mat1je5) has gone a long way, from replacing an item ofenquiry, to substituting for an unretrievable or unutterable item to avoidtaboo and embarrassment, and further to a negative evaluative attitudinalmarker that can occupy a range of syntactic positions (including thepre-nominal and clause-initial positions) to signal the speaker's disagreementand derogatory attitude, and finally to become an interrogative sentence-finalparticle which is essentially subjective and negatively biased. Adopting abroadly interactional linguistic perspective (Ochs et al., 1996; Seltingand Couper-Kuhlen, 2001), our present study looks at how me1 can be used to negotiate interpersonal functions in thecourse of conversational interactions. Findings in this paper will havesignificant contributions to the study of wh-markers generally, and provide important insights into howextended functions of wh-markers can be developed in Sinitic languagesspecifically.