A Contrastive Study Of The Mood System Between Chinese And English

In recent years, contrastive linguistics has developed quickly. But the comparative study on the Chinese and English mood system has not attracted many researchers and the achievements are not very satisfactory. Thus, this dissertation is to make an in-depth comparative study on the Chinese and English mood system based on the declarative and interrogative mood. It includes eight chapters:Chapter One studies the definition of mood and the possible devices that can be applied to mark moods and then presents a new definition for the research work in this dissertation. First, the author has done a historical retrospection on the definition of mood and the research on mood and modality in China and the West, and elaborated the differences in these aspects between Chinese and Western researchers. Then, he makes a new definition of mood for this dissertation: he takes Chinese grammarians' definition of mood as the norm and it includes the western mood and modality. Finally, he sets the research goal and methods.Chapter Two makes a literature review on the research of mood and modality from the aspect of traditional Chinese, modern Chinese grammar, English grammar, and comparative study between Chinese and English. It points out the problems which require further study.Chapter Three makes a macroscopic comparison between Chinese and English mood system. Some universals and peculiarities have been summarized. The universals are: both languages can mark moods with a variety of same devices such as intonation, word order, (modal) auxiliaries, adverbs and interjections. There is a high degree of overlapping. Many categories of functional mood in both languages are found to be the same, such as the indicative, the interrogative and the imperative. Both mood systems are a multi-level system and can realize the co-occurrence of different moods in one sentence. Both apply metaphor to realize the shifting of the same pragmatic meaning from one kind of mood to anther. Both can extend the pragmatic function of mood in similar directions. Typologically, the distribution of the main devices of mood in both languages complies with the distance iconicity motivation. The development of modal expression of both languages is mainly analytic.But the typological difference also leads to great peculiarities between them: English modal expression focuses on the relation with the real world and the distinction between realis and irrealis, while Chinese on the concern for communicators. English moods entangle with tense, aspect and other grammatical categories, while Chinese moods don't. English devices of mood always center roundverbs, synthetic and analytic devices complementing each other, while Chinese devices of mood always center round modal particles and the main devices arc analytic. Chinese modal expressions are flexible, more choices of devices for one expression, while English expressions are rigid, more stipulations for them. English is a tense-prominent language, but Chinese is an aspect-prominent language, and it may also be a mood-prominent language, or even more the latter than the former, according to GOSP.From Chapter Four to Chapter Seven, based on the indicative and interrogative mood, the specific devices of moods are compared.Chapter Four compares Chinese and English (modal) auxiliaries. Their universals are: both can be followed by full verbs. Both can function as reply alone. Both can form structures of negation. Both can have modality meanings and be compatible with functional moods. Their peculiarities arc: the Chinese modal auxiliaries haven't developed a regular and symmetric distribution in modal meaning like English modal auxiliaries. The difference is due to their different diachronic development, which has played a main role in Chinese modal auxiliaries' close entanglement with adverbs, and English modal auxiliaries' distinction with them. There arc various forms of negation with Chinese modal auxiliaries while only one with the English modal auxiliaries. The modal auxiliaries can co-occur in a Chinese sentence while...