Shiba (是吧) works as a tag question, mainly used to request confirmation and seek agreement or affiliation in Mandarin everyday interactions. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis, this paper explores the interactional uses of shiba in response positions. The analysis of shiba in two types of sequence environments. First, after acts that seem to convey information, participants use shiba to indicate they have received the information and display the other party to continue elaborating on the topic. Second, in spontaneous suggestion sequences, participants can use shiba to formally affirm and accept the information in a suggestion, thereby indirectly declining it.

This research to examine how recipients use the zhen de (真的) to show agreement in response to previously expressed opinions. The analysis identifies two main patterns of agreement. In the zhen de→X pattern, recipients who have not previously shared their experiential standpoint in the conversation use zhen de to agree, and then make statements expressing their own experiential perspectives. And the standalone use of zhen de occurs when the participants already have a shared experiential basis in the conversation. These patterns illustrate how recipients assert agreement from a standpoint of shared experience.

This study employs conversation analysis to examine understanding checks prefaced with jiushishuo (就是说) when there are no issues with hearing or understanding the preceding conversation. The results indicate that these understanding checks can be categorized into affiliative and disaffiliative types. The former occurs in the middle of a telling, where the telling may be disfluent or redundant. It precisely articulates what the speaker intended to say and makes confirmation relevant, thereby facilitating the telling’s progression. The latter occurs at a possible completion of a telling. It serves as a harbinger of disagreement or disaffiliation or a vehicle for other actions.

This study focuses on nonverbal clicks produced at the beginning of responses to questions. An analysis of clicks using conversation analysis found that clicks are mainly used in the following three situations: 1) there is inappropriate content in the previous question; 2) there is a lack of strong evidence to support the speaker’s answer to the previous question; and 3) the answer to the question requires more than one TCU. From this, we can see that clicks are used to indicate difficulty in answering the previous question in a straightforward manner.

The so-called fayuci (发语词) usage of the ancient Chinese word fu (夫) is derived from its referential use of distal demonstratives. Based on this function, fu (夫) was used as a topic marker, and it came to express pragmatic implications, such as the introduction of premise in the argument or speaker’s subjective assertions, due to the requirements of various contexts. Used repeatedly, these discourse marker functions were established as part of fu (夫). This process can be considered an expansion of meaning and function through pragmaticalization and not grammaticalization.

This study examines the use of the construction “VOguo” in Mandarin Chinese to express an experience. The author, citing scholarly literature and examples, argues that this construction is present in both standard Mandarin and regional Chinese dialects. The “VOguo” construction adds a descriptive element to the sentence, shifting the focus to an element other than the object. Therefore, positioning guo after the object emphasizes the experience of the entire event rather than the action itself, which would occur if guo followed the verb. The study underscores the importance of considering regional dialects and historical changes in word order.

Budai X de originated in dialect grammar but has gradually been accepted in standard Chinese. This study categorized budai X de into two types—jia and yi—and clarified their meanings from the modal perspective. Specifically, jia means to deny the occurrence of expected situation X, and yi means to discourage a listener from doing X. The study also explored the semantic and grammatical features of budai X de, showing that jia expresses a speaker’s attitude toward proposition X (proposition-oriented) and belongs to subjective expression, whereas yi expresses a speaker’s attitude toward the listener (listener-oriented) and belongs to intersubjective expression.