earticle

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This study investigates the sentence-final particle zán (咱) in The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xīxiāngjì 『西廂記』), focusing on its pragmatic functions and distribution. The analysis demonstrates that zán fulfills four modal roles: imperative, hortative, declarative, and requestive. In imperative contexts, it conveys commands directed at the addressee; in hortative contexts, it expresses polite proposals for joint action; in declarative contexts, it emphasizes or articulates the speaker’s judgment, intention, or resolution; and in requestive contexts, it demands the addressee’s action without implying collective participation. Unlike its primary function in Modern Chinese, where zán denotes first-person reference, in Xīxiāngjì it occurs predominantly in sentence-final position to signal modal nuances. A frequency analysis records 5 imperative, 4 hortative, 10 declarative, and 7 requestive instances. These findings indicate that zá (咱) in Yuan-dynasty drama carried a wider range of pragmatic functions than in later stages of Chinese, offering valuable insights into the historical evolution of sentence-final particles.