A Contrastive Research To The Phenomenon "Adjectives As Secondary Depictive Predicates" In The German And Chinese Languages

The term "secondary predicates" comes from Western linguistic theories.They serve as the trailing specification and detailing of their primary predicates.Secondary predicates are classified into "depictive predicates" and"resultative predicates".In both languages,the main difference between these two lies in that depictive predicates appear as trailing modifications.They describe the states of facts and have a loose relation with matrix verbs.But resultative predicates function as complements describing the states of objects and having a close relation to matrix verbs.This does not mean that depictive predicates are less important than resultative predicates.They are common in two languages.Therefore,they should not be left out in researches.In recent years,researches on secondary predicates have focused on the syntactic structure of the resultative predicates in both languages.Using the generative grammar,the relationship between matrix verbs and resultative predicates are examined.But there are few researches which concentrate on depictive predicates in Chinese because no inflected forms appear in this language.In the sentence er isst einen Fisch roh,this depictive predicate roh occupies an adverbial position in the Chinese language,such as ta shengchi le yitiaoyu.Because of this position,depictive predicates are also called adjectival adverbials in Chinese.But if these two are just the same,further researches must continue to be done,so that the relationship between depictive predicates and attributes in German and the relationship between depictive predicates and adjectival adverbials in Chinese can be clearly indicated.Using generative grammar and semantic I try to answer the following questions in this thesis:Can all adjectives function as depictive predicates?What are the differences between three phenomena such as adjectives as depictive predicates,as attributes,as adverbials in both languages?How depictive predicates differ from adjectival adverbials in Chinese?To solve these questions,this thesis first limits itself to certain sentence constructions.Depictive predicates can occur in all German sentence types,but they exist mainly in the DE and V-V construction in Chinese.That’s why in the Chinese part I deal with depreciative predicates in these two constructions.Then,from the definition,I established the existence of the depictive predicates and their referents in both languages.Using the examples,I focus on conditions that adjectives as depictive predicates are supposed to fulfill.Finally,I try to systematically explore adjectives as depictive predicates,as attributes,and as adverbials.Therefore,the answers to previous questions will be emphasized.The following conclusions can be drawn from these analyzes:The adjectives referring to states can function as depictive predicates,such as qualifying adjectives in German and state adjectives in Chinese.In the German language,depictive predicates are formal.Their syntactic position is quite flexible.They refer to states of referents semantically.They have a temporal parallelism with actions.Pragmatically,they can cause the semantic vagueness.Subjects and objects can be referred at the same time.The exact reference should be decided according to the context.That’s why the expressions with depictive predicates are relatively subjective.Adjectival attributes are usually between articles and nouns.They should agree with these elements syntactically.Semantically,they describe the properties of objects.These properties are independent of the time structure of the actions.They have a close relation with described things.No semantic ambiguity is caused.Therefore,expressions with attributes have the objectivity.In Chinese,the main differences between depictive predicates and attributes are:depictive predicates are syntactically marked by the adverbial DE,but attributes by the attributive DE.Depictive predicates are always preceded by verbs and attributes before nouns.Depictive predicates describe semantically preliminary states of the referents,which depend on the time of the actions.Adjectival attributes are always related to characteristics of the depicted objects that are not related to the time of the behavior.The semantic vagueness also occurs in the Chinese language,which leads to subjectivity.But the expressions with attributes have the objectivity on the pragmatic level.Although depictive predicates occupy the adverbial position,they are distinct from adverbials.Depictive predicates cannot be used as typical adverbs at syntactic level.On the semantic level,they describe the states of subjects or objects.They cannot modify the actions,unlike adjectival adverbials.The novelties of this master thesis are:Firstly,depictive predicates are examined under the semantic and syntactic perspective.Then the differences between adjectives that act as depictive predicates,as adjectival attributes and adverbials are systematically discussed.Secondly,I try to differ depictive predicates from adjectival attributes using the time structure.I also try to illustrate the differences between depictive predicates and adjectival adverbials in Chinese.