Modality Of Psych Verb "Zhidao" In Mandarin Chinese

Modality,as a grammatical category that expresses the speaker’s subjective attitude toward the truth value of the propositions or the realistic state of events expressed in sentences,consists of a series of semantic concepts: possibility,necessity,ability,willingness,obligation,permission,etc.Modal auxiliary verbs,among many other linguistic devices,are the most important linguistic means that are used to express intended modality in a sentence.In modern Chinese,"zhidao" ,usually used as a psychological verb,i.e.a verb that expresses a psychological state,means "to have knowledge of facts or truth" or "to realize and understand" .Syntactically,this word has two usages,either as a notional verb taking nominal objects(V+N),or as an auxiliary verb taking verbal objects(V+V).Existing literature has studied "zhidao" from quite diverse perspectives,including its semantic features,syntactic environments,"X+zhidao" fixed constructions,etc.Although a few studies have touched upon its subjectivity and epistemic mode,most of these researches have not yet deeply probed into its potential of modality expression.This thesis,in line with the traditional three-fold distinction of modality initiated by Palmer(1990),namely epistemic modality,dynamic modality,and deontic modality,aims to describe,analyze,and explain the different modality meanings expressed by"zhidao" ,a typical psych verb in Mandarin Chinese.A corpus of 3,000 samples(sentences using "zhidao" as their predicators)randomly collected from BCC is established for scrutiny and analysis in a mixed approach that combines qualitative and quantitative research methods.Three research questions are addressed:(1)what types of modality can be expressed by the psych verb "zhidao" ?(2)what syntactic behaviors does "zhidao" display when it expresses modality? and(3)what pragmatic functions"zhidao" can play in discourse?This study arrives at the following research findings:(1)"zhidao" can express a variety of modalities,ranging from dynamic modalitythat denotes either ability or willingness,to deontic modality that denotes obligation and commitment,and epistemic modality that denotes deductive and assumptive inference.(2)"zhidao" exhibits syntactic features and grammatical meanings in line with the typical modal auxiliaries in Mandarin Chinese when the former two modalities,namely dynamic modality and deontic modality,are expressed.(3)"zhidao" ,when used as a modal auxiliary verb,plays important pragmatic functions,implying a subjective evaluation held by the addresser,positive or negative,towards the addressee or any other intended participants in the discourse.This study supplements the existing literature on the study of psych verbs in general,and "zhidao" in particular,which assumably provides new ideas and enlightenment for more research on this verb and many other psych verbs in human languages.In addition,this study hopefully benefits those who teach Chinese as a foreign language.