Studies Of The Affixes In Modern Chinese Based On The Grammaticlization Theory

The nature and scope of the affixes in modern Chinese language havebeen a topic for endless debate, and the demarcation of the scope of theaffixes have close relationship to the establishment of the word-formingsystem on the one hand and to the determination of the types of modernChinese language on the other. The thesis attempts to analyze the keypoints of the previously discussed views on the scope of the affixes inmodern Chinese language, and, from the angle of word-formation and byresorting to the theory of grammaticalization, to elaborate on the natureand scope of the affixes in modern Chinese language and classify theaffixes according to the types of the marked lexical part of speech. Thethesis is divided into four parts besides "Introduction" and "Conclusion":The first part analyzes the previous exploration of the nature and scope ofthe affixes; the second discusses the significance of the demarcation ofthe affixes and the several questions needed to be considered; the thirddeals with the track and the mechanism of the grammaticalization of theaffix-forming; the fourth explains the nature, scope, function andclassification of the affixes. The paper takes the two typical affixes "Lao"and "Zi" as examples, first argues that in their forming-process, theaffixes in modern Chinese language universally manifest the followingtrack of grammaticalization: notional words→functionalwords→functional morphemes, and then analyzes the different characteristics and concrete manifestations revealed in the different stagesof the grammaticalization of the affixes. The grammaticalizationmechanism that causes the notional words to be changed into affixesincludes the syntactical mechanism, semantic mechanism, phoneticmechanism and cognitive mechanism and others. The thesis distinguishesthe basic nature and the general nature of the affixes, holds that theaffixes are orientation non-word-forming morphemes with highlyfunctional lexical meaning in among compound words, and offers thecriteria for the determination of the scope of the affixes: lexical meaninghighly functional; non-word-forming; fixed position. The thesis takes asthe scope of examination all the affixes mentioned in the 14 articles orbooks published in the 20th century included or touched upon in Studies ofthe Word-Formation in the Chinese Language and the linguistic elementssimilar to the affixes, offers an exhaustive discrimination of them basedon the criteria of the affixes, and afterwards accordingly determines thescope of the affixes in modern Chinese language. The affixes haveword-forming function and the function of marking the lexical part ofspeech. The quasi-affixes should be classified in the scope of the lexicalroots.