A Research On The Typical Characteristics Of Contemporary Chinese Double Object Sentences

Although scholars have conducted the massive researches with regard to double object sentences from the different angles and obtained the plentiful research results, they have mainly studied those containing the meaning of "giving". Furthermore, their researches are based on the supposition that some kinds of sentence patterns are double object sentences without considering the essential questions, such as what is double object sentences, what features they reveals in the syntax and the semantics, what is the standards by which they are classified, and without expounding systematically the mutual relations between various kinds of double object sentences. The thesis is to solve those problems and specifically divided into the following parts:In the first chapter, the author reviews the present research situation of double object sentences from both synchronic and diachronic studies, and from the used theories of modern linguistics such as valency grammar, generative grammar, cognitive grammar, and typological linguistics, points out the existing problems and defects and displays the research train of the thoughts.In the second chapter, the author induces that the features of Chinese double object sentences are two actants follow a verb which can respectively form two single object structures with the two actants . Thus, on the structural level, the whole double object structures mean that the predicate verb first constructs a verb-object structure with indirect object, then the verb-object structure constructs another verb-object structure with the direct object. The semantic characteristics of this double object structure are that the verb behavior causes the subordinative relationships to change between the indirect object and the direct object, according to which Chinese double object sentences are reclassified. Afterwards, the author probes into the syntactic attributes of the numeral phrase behind the predicate verb from the semantic function and shows that the use of the numeral phrase is one way to express the numeral features of Chinese predicate elements in semantics, which indicates that it is declarative in essence, not referential. Therefore, it is not an object in syntax..In the third chapter, the author emphatically discusses the typical characteristics of double object sentences on the bases of " the prototype category" in cognitive linguistic, which contains the following questions: the typical characteristics between double object sentences, such as the typical differences in the double object sentences owning the narrow sense of " giving", "informing", and "placing", and the typical characteristics in the interior of the same sentence pattern, such as the double object sentences with the narrow sense of "giving". In the meantime of doing so, the principle of "the form agrees with the meaning" is strictly obeyed, that is to say, what characteristics the most typical double object sentences own should be found in the syntax and the semantics, the same with the not too typical and the most atypical. In the end, the result double object sentences are proved to approach to the word order "verb-object-complement" from modern Chinese and dialect.In the fourth chapter, the author studies double object sentences in a bigger grammatical unit-discourse and discovers that the sentence patterns which exist in the form of double object sentences in the static and the abstract condition take on the form of a single object sentence in the dynamic and the concrete condition because of the restriction of the discourse and the context. Moreover, this kind of transformed ability reveals its differences as a result of the restriction of the typical characteristics of double object sentences , which manifests that not only do double object sentences distribute more in the discourses, but also they are easier to be transformed into single object sentences. Simutaneously, the author inspects the mechanism that sometimes the double object form "NV+ä»–+O_Dir" reveals a form of a single object form in the semantics after "ä»–" is grammaticalized.In the fifth chapter, the author emphatically inspected the types of superior word orders and the label modes of double object sentences in the languages of SVO,SOV and VSO on the base of grasping language materials related to double object sentences in 50 languages. Finally, the author explains the types of the superior word orders of double object sentences by utilizing the "Distance-label" corresponding law and rearranges the superior word order concerning Liu Danqing's(2001) explanation on the function of double object sentences.