partykuła "ba", ulubienica lingwistów

Oto co napisał Ethan Shaskan Bumas w swoim artykule:

Any cockamamie idea you (i.e., I) might have had about literature, he had already entertained, if not exactly brought home; any obscure writer you (I) had discovered, he had probably had over for drinks in some German Schloss. This made conversations sort of one-sided, which teacher-student relations were probably supposed to be.

I found myself looking desperately for something to say that would in some way be new and interesting to him. I settled on Chinese grammar, the ma-question word, the -ba particle. The ma functions like the French n'est ce pas — no biggie. The -ba particle, beloved of linguists, indicates something between a question and an imperative. Ni chouyan ba; of course you will take the cigarette I offer. Ezra Pound believed that reading ideographs was like looking at a picture they described, but if that was true then reading a newspaper would be watching the news on TV-ma, like USA Todayma? Unfortunately I knew much less about Chinese grammar than I needed to make myself interesting.