Modern Chinese Linked To The Syntax Perspective,

This thesis takes a dynamic perspective on the study of the serial verb constructions (SVCs). The key point is that the SVCs in Modem Chinese are on the way of grammaticalization from discourse to syntactic structure that is showing by a strong tendency of a shift from a complex structure to a single verb one.There are five parts in this thesis. The first one takes a brief review on the previous studies on this topic, and relevant studies on the new approach "grammaticalization".The second and the third parts of this thesis demonstrate that the SVCs are on a lower level in grammaticalization, which can be seen by the constraints of word order and clause integration. The word order inner SVCs is frozen by the sequential mode of events, that is so called TSP (Temporal Sequence Principle), which is the cognitive basis and the syntactic principle of SVCs as well. Since the TSP is realized on three levels: conceptual level, logical level, and cognitive level, correspondingly, three types there are in syntactic ways in SVCs: typical (including the most typical and the inferior typical), non-typical, and marginal one. The inferior one is very close to the complex sentences syntactically, and marginal one is close to the single verb pattern. The SVCs' occurrence shows a continuum of clause integration on the process of grammaticalization. SVCs rank on a position between the complex sentence and the simple sentence syntactically, and which could be told by some parameters on clause linkage: desententializadon, grammaticalization of the main predicate, downgrading of subordinate clause, etc.The forth and fifth parts of this thesis give more evidence from lexicalization and emergence of overt grammatical or pragmatic markers to tell the instability of SVCs. First of all, since the expression of verbal serialization is always parallel with a certain type of events, verb serialization is universally characterized by heavy lexicalization of particular combinations. The results of lexicalization of SVCs in Chinese are some types of compound words such as liandongshi, dongbushi or zhuangzhongshi. And the second, the verbs zai, zhe, wanle, huitou from SVCs context all are grammatical ized as aspect markers or discourse markers.Some other issues also are touched in this thesis, such as definite status. In this thesis, the basic principle on Chinese detiniteness is generalized as two aspects, that is:As for a subordinate clause, the more desententialized it is, the less definite the minor verb could be found; the deeper the grammaticalization of main predicate, the higher definite.