Chinese Adjectives And Their Event Structure Representations

Adjective functioning as predicate is a particular phenomenon in modern Chinese. Within event structure framework, this dissertation applies Mohanan et al.'s Grammatical Semantics (GS) to the analysis and categorization of the event types denoted by Chinese adjectives; and it tries to prove the feasibility of Grammatical Semantics Theory and event structure in the Chinese adjective analysis.Chapter one talks about the definition of adjective, the differences between verb and adjective and the current study angles; and it also points out the weak points in adjective studies. Chapter two first discusses the historic reviews of event study, its definitions and categorizations; then this part deals with the framework crucial to this dissertation—Grammatical Semantics and the event structure figures proposed by Mohanan et al., and last it discusses the connections and differences between GS and Montague Semantics and Logical Forms. Based on Mohanan et al.'s event structure, the third chapter tires to find out the sentence patterns which contain adjectives serving as predicates according to the subdivisions of event: states, processes (including accomplishments and achievements), and activities. And the event structures for Chinese sentences are showed in figures. According to the study of this dissertation, there are corresponding adjectives for each type of event. At the same time, the paper also indicates the weak points of Mohanan et al.'s framework: there is certain ungrammatical Chinese sentence that cannot be rationally explained. This study aims to schematize the event structures expressed by adjectives in Chinese and thus provide the typology of event structure for this kind of word.