Observation Of The Verb "Da" From Several Perspectives In View Of Its Prototype

Da, a typically and comparatively special and complex monosyllable verb falling into the category of Shou Bianpang, consists of numerous meanings and versatile applications in Chinese. In terms of word-formation, the application of Da, which was used since Song Dynasty, still prevails on modern times along with its largest amount of numbers in usage. Scholars from Ou Yangxiu and Wu Zen to the later Liu Bannong, Chen Wangdao, and Hu Mingyang and a few of other scholars used to make effort to expound Da's meaning and to look for the key to word-formation in essence.From the perspectives of theory of grammaticalization, this dissertation sets out to observe and study on the syntax transformation of Da and its semantic extension trace, in addition, it aims at exploring the implied tie between Da's literary meaning and its extensive meanings under the outline of cognitive theory. At last, according to the prototype theory, it gives analyses on the interactive law of Da and nouns, including the object's layer patterns in Da & N form and its compound and paradigmatic relation in structure.On the basis of linguistic data, chapter one studies the meaning of Da and its transformation of sentence pattern. Gathering its compound relation with the following objects in syntax, Da is likely to be analyzed form its literary meaning, extensive meanings, and form meanings with their interactive manifestation. The chapter also probes Da's developing path, which ranges from literary meaning to extensive one, extensive meaning to abstract one, and abstract meaning to reduction one as well as summarizes Da's evolution mechanism in the form of parallel separation. In chapter two, it mainly deals with the analysis of Da's semantic system. Generally speaking, it is quite confused for people to grasp Da's semantic meanings. With its rich usages and meanings, the problem of making clear of the implied relation of Da's literary meaning and its polysemous ones should be taken into the priority. Meanwhile, comparing the application of Gao, a modern Chinese polysemous verb, with Da in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics respectively, it uncovers Da's three flat attributes in the condition of the generalizing.According to prototype theory, chapter three analyzes the layer pattern of objects in the wake of Da in sentences. The chapter is to be divided into three parts. Part one demonstrates the prototype characteristic among a certain group of verbs (verbs in this group have meanings similar to beating.) and its forming of polysemous meanings. In part two, it aims to analyze the syntactical features of the prototype Da concerning syntactic forms, thus making clear that prototype Da owns the attributes of eventive verbs while the polysemous Da has the semantic traits of non-enventive. In the last part, it underscores and classifies the structure type of Da & N, and analyzes the forming mechanism of Da & N structure and ranks of typicality for those words appearing in the structure.Chapter four mainly analyzes the compound and paradigmatic relation of Da & N in structure. With an eye to theory of collocation, it studies and observes the internal lays pattern of structural words and combination of words as well as the alternation relation between nouns and verbs. On the grounds of the collocation, the combination type of Da with its following objects could be divided into free combination, pasting combination, and fixed combination. From the perspectives of alternation relation, among the overall internal structure there lie the bilateral alternation between nouns and verbs. The nouns in Da & N structure have analogy traits, which displays that the structure has certain characteristic in paradigmatic relation. This chapter also demonstrates the deficiency of analogy in the internal structure and structure analogy mechanism.