Polarity-like and discourse-sensitive distribution in Mandarin cónglái: A game-theoretic analysis

This study uses the Mandarin macro-temporal adverb cónglái as a case study to examine how distributional restrictions relate to pragmatic felicity in discourse. Although not a canonical negative polarity item, cónglái shows a polarity-like distribution: it is disfavored in affirmative episodic clauses but more acceptable in negative, low-frequency, exclusive, and stative or evaluative contexts. Yet structurally possible uses may also become infelicitous when the speaker’s discourse goal favors caution, tact, or weak commitment. This study argues that this polarity-like and discourse-sensitive distribution arises from the interaction of temporal semantics, aspectual structure, and context-dependent communicative utility. Semantically, cónglái widens the temporal domain and favors a long-span, near-exceptionless construal. Pragmatically, this construal is favored when it yields sufficient communicative utility. The study combines corpus and behavioral evidence with domain-widening, information-theoretic, and game-theoretic analysis to examine utility-based strategic choice. The results show that temporal widening reshapes prior expectations and can increase the update value of exceptionless claims. Whether cónglái is favored, however, depends not on strengthening alone, but on how the resulting interpretation interacts with markedness cost, credibility, relevance, and the local communicative goal. This study contributes to research on macro-temporal adverbs, polarity sensitivity, and strategic language use, with broader implications for the cross-linguistic analysis of marked expressions.