Many languages have devices that affect the default discourse effects of certain speech acts. In this project, I discuss the effects of the Mandarin discourse particle ba on questions and assertions. This particle appears to weaken the forcefulness of assertions, but it has been claimed to have the opposite effect on questions, making them more forceful ‘‘you must answer this question.’’ I discuss new data showing that ba-declaratives are not always ‘weak’ and ba-interrogatives are not stronger than unmarked interrogatives in the same context, which is not explained by current theories. I propose that, uniformly, ba is used to mark its prejacent as contributing to an issue it represents as open, and the correlation with clause types is an epiphenomenon.

Output: paper; video