On Methods That Express Foci In Mandar In Chinese

This dissertation has studied some methods that express foci inMandarin Chinese from two perspectives. Firstly, it has investigatedfocal properties of the subject of ZHOUBIAN. the NP after LIAN in LIANconstruction and the interrogative constituents and their responses inMandarin. These belong to issues how contrastive foci are expressed insome special constructions. Secondly,it has explored associatingcharacteristics of some special focus-sensitive operators CAI, JIU, DOU1and DOU2 in Mandarin, and mechanism of interpreting their focus-sensitiveexpressions. This belongs to issues how semantic foci are expressed infocus-sensitive expressions.Existing focal theory about focal properties of contrastive focusare mainly on typical contrastive foci, for instance, cleft construction,only-phrase in English, contrastive focus marked by SHI in Mandarin, andso on. But sentences of atypical contrastive foci are neglected, forexample, the subject of ZHOUBIAN, the NP after LIAN in LIAN constructionand the interrogative constituents and their responses in Mandarin, etc.After decomposing the semantic value of the typical contrastive focus intothree elements: the referred item, the contrasted item and the contrastivedomain, the dissertation have investigated similarities and differencesof semantic, pragmatic functions between typical contrastive foci andatypical contrastive fooi. It is shown that the subject of ZHOUBIAN,the NP after LIAN in LIAN construction and the interrogative constituentsand their responses in Mandarin are also contrastive foci. However,typical contrastive focus is overt and atypical contrastive focus iscovert.In its earlier stage, the theory of focus-association paid a gooddeal of attention to general characters of focus-sensitive operators, andneglected their specific characters. Focus sensitivity usually is lookedas a uniform phenomenon. Scholars used or tried to use one single mechanismto explain all cases of focus sensitivity. In Chinese linguistic circlesfirst using the theory of semantic sensitivity and pragmatic sensitivitythat Beaver & Clark proposed, this paper has explored the semanticallyexplaining mechanisms and associating characters of focus-sensitiveoperators in Mandarin such as CAI, JIU, DOU, and has first found out thein-situ association of focus-sensitive operators that existing theoriesof focus-association haven't ever cared about. When they are bearing focalstress, being in-situ association some focus-sensitive operators, forinstance, CAI, JIU, are semantically even pragmatically different frombeing non-in-situ association. But the meanings of some focus-sensitiveoperators that are mentioned most frequently such as ZHI(only),ZONGSHI(always), TONGCHANG(usually) don't change when they are in-situ association. According to the existing theory of focus association, thetruth conditions of focus-sensitive expressions should be different whentheir focal stress changes. However being in-situ association the truthconditions of some sentences with operators such as ZHI(only),ZONGSHI(always), TONGCHANG(usually) and DOU1 are also identical withbeing non-in-situ association. Moreover after having explored themeanings of CAI, JIU, DOU it is shown that we can get more entailed andmore precise interpretations of them.There are five chapters in all in this dissertation. Except Chapter1 Preface and Chapter 5 Epilogue, the main part of this dissertationincludes: Chapter 2 The Covert Expressions of Contrastive Focus inMandarin Chinese, Chapter 3 The Semantic Interpretations and TheCharacters of Focus-association of CAI and JIU in Mandarin, Chapter 4The Semantic Interpretations and The Characters of Focus-association ofDOU(DOU1 & DOU2).Chapter 1 introduces the history and the present situation ofresearches on focus, methods that express foci, the main purpose and thetheoretic methods of this dissertation, and such related terms asinformation, information structure, given information, new information,focus, information focus, contrastive focus, semantic focus and so on.Chapter 2 investigates similarities and differences of semantic,pragmatic functions between typical contrastive foci and atypicalcontrastive foci. It is shown that the subject of ZHOUBIAN, the NP afterLIAN in LIAN construction and the interrogative constituents and theirresponses in Mandarin are also contrastive foci. However, typicalcontrastive focus is overt and atypical contrastive focus is covert;Chapter 3 explores the semantically explaining mechanisms and associatingcharacters of focus-sensitive operators in Mandarin such as CAI, JIU. Itis shown that neither can they capture their interpretation with commonexplaining mechanism as the focus-sensitive expressions of ZHI, nor canthe expressions of their different lexical items share same explainingmechanism, because they associate with foci using different lexicalmeanings in three different directions: forwards, in-situ, backwards.Besides the background of a sentence, the presupposition comparing withexpectation is usually mapped on the restrictor of tripartite structureas well, even a few of lexical items. And a few of foci associated withCAI and JIU don't have exhaustivity; Chapter 4 studies the semanticallyexplaining mechanisms and associating characters of focus-sensitiveoperator DOU1 and DOU2. It is shown that they have obviously differentmechanisms of semantic interpretation and characters of focus-association.Bearing focal stress DOU1 can realize in-situ association, and then DOU1can associate with foci in three different directions: forwards, in-situ,backwards. Its focus-sensitive expression is semantical sensitiveexpression, can be explained with regular tripartite structure without mapping presupposition or other contents on the restrictor of tripartitestructure. DOU2 must be weak obligatorily, can not realize in-situassociation, then it can associate with foci only in two directions:forwards, backwards. Its focus-sensitive expression is pragmaticalsensitive expression, when being explained with regular tripartitestructure it need tn map presupposition or other pragmatic informationon the restrictor of tripartite structure. Chapter 5 introducesexperiences of research on this problem and some questions that need tobe studied in future.The focal theory examines languages in complexperspective(including phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics etc.) orin stereoscopic perspective. Through researches on methods that expressfoci we hope to describe linguistic phenomena more precisely and explainlinguistic phenomena more accurately.