Research On Tentative Category In Modern Chinese

Based on abundant source of language facts,this dissertation analyzes and discusses the tentative category of modern Chinese in the view of general linguistics,typology linguistics and cognitive Linguistics.It mainly focus on the coding forms of tentative meaning of action and behavior in modern Chinese,the scope of study includes Mandarin and Chinese dialects.The main elements of this dissertation include four parts: analysis of the semantic natures of tentative category;study on the form system of tentative category;the diachronic evolution of typical tentative category marker;typological characteristics of tentative category.Firstly,it analyzes the semantic natures of tentative category of modern Chinese,and considers that tentative category has typical irrealis feature,and it shows the purpose and subjectivity of the speaker,the action time points to the furure,has the characteristics of little momentum.On the basis of these semantic natures,this dissertation analyzes the relationships between tentative category and tense,aspect,modality,considers that the irrealis feature makes tentative category different from aspect,it is not appropriate to think of the tentative category as the sub-category of aspect,there is a close relationship between tentative category and modality.Then,this dissertation describes,analyses and compares three main forms of tentative category,auxiliary "Kan",verb republication and "Vyixia" structure.The study holds that auxiliary "Kan" are the grammatical form of tentative category,which can express tentative meaning of an action unconditionally.Verb republication and "Vyixia" structure are primary forms of delimitative momentum,but it can derived tentative meaning from certain context,therefore,tentive meaning should be consider as pragmatic meaning of thess two forms.Based on this,this dissertation constructs a tentative category form system with auxiliary "Kan",verb republication and "Vyixia",auxiliary "Kan" is the core prototype form,verb republication and "Vyixia" structure is the outer edge forms.And then,it investigates the diachronic evolution of auxiliary "Kan" in modern Chinese,with the grammaticalization context theory,it puts forward a new explanation for the origin of tentative marker "Kan" from syntactic perspective.Lastly,the tentative category of Chinese is placed in the context of human languages,and compared with ethnic languages and foreign Languages,it is concluded that tentative category is the products of euphemistic expression of pragmatic strategies,it is a reflection of the uniqueness of national thoughts.Including introduction and conclusion,this dissertation is composed of nine chapters.Chapter one introduces the research object and goal,review related research,points out the existing problems,puts forward the research basis and the research value,explains the research methods and the research thoughts,as well as the structure arrangement and the sources of corpus.Chapter two analyzes the semantic natures of tentative category.Based on the view of general linguistics and typology linguistics,it is concluded that tentative category has typical irrealis feature,and shows the purpose and subjectivity of the speaker,points to the furure of the action time,has the characteristics of little momentum.On the basis of this,this chapter also analyzes the relationship between tentative category and tense,aspect,modality,considers that it is not appropriate to think of the tentative category as the sub-category of aspect,there is a close relationship between tentative category and modality.Chapter three study the tentative marker of "Kan" in Mandarin and Chinese dialects.Firstly,analyze the syntactic and usage characteristics of "Kan" as an tentative marker in Mandarin chinese,then study the usage of "Kan" and its equivalent words in Chinese dialects.It is concluded that they have developed into a specific tentative grammatical form in Modern Chinese.Chapter four focuses on the VP structure types before "Kan".Through sorting and summarizing VP structure types of "VP Kan " in Mandarin and Chinese dialects,it is found that the VP structure types of "VP Kan " show the characteristic of delimitative forms,and puts forward an explanation for this phenomenon.Researches in this chapter also finds that the structure of "VVKan" in Mandarin Chinese has became a construction and strongly permeated into Chinese dialects.Chapter five mainly focuses on the relationship between verb republication and tentive meaning.Firstly,it introduces the main forms of verb republication in Mandarin Chinese and Chinese dialects,and then discusses the relationship between verb republication and the tentative meaning,it is concluded that tentative meaning is not the grammatical meaning of verb republication,Only under the condition of "check the results of an action",the verb republication can acquire tentative meaning,so tentative meaning is the pragmatic meaning of verb republication.This view has been verified by Chinese dialects.Chapter six mainly explores the relationship between the structure of "Vyixia" and the tentive forms.The "Vyixia" structure is not the grammatical form of tentive meaning in modern Chinesee,it is mainly used to express delimitative meaning.Some of them has been grammaticalized into delimitative meaning marker in dialects.The relationship between "Vyixia" and tentative meaning is that it can express tentative meaning under certain conditions.Tentative meaning is the derivation meaning of "Vyixia",rather than its inherent grammatical meaning.Chapter seven examines the synchronic variations and diachronic evolution of auxiliary "Kan" in modern Chinese.Starting with the dialect case,it points out that the typical tentative marker universally originates from the visual verb in modern Chinese,then,using the grammaticalization context theory,it is concluded that the tentative grammatical meaning can be developed from visual verbs because it has experienced the critical stage of“ VP +Kan+S” in syntactic structure.It is syntactically and semantically,both contribute to the creation of tentative marker "Kan".Chapter eight gives explorations to the tentative category of Chinese from the background of human language.This chapter first summarizes the general expression of the tentative category in the Chinese dialect,then compared with ethnic languages and foreign Languages,it is conclude that there is a general grammatical form to express the tentative meaning,especially in ethnic languages with close contact with Chinese.It then examines the wider range of human languages and finds that in foreign Languages such systems of expression,similar to tentative category of modern Chinese,are not conmon.Therefore,we draw the possible conclusion that tentative category is the products of Chinese euphemistic expression of pragmatic strategies,it is a reflection of the uniqueness of national thought.The nine chapter is the conclusion of this paper,summarizes the main conclusions and innovations of this paper,and points out the insufficiency of this paper and the problems that need to be studied further.