A Study Of The Determinate-indefinite Category Of Kazakh Language

Language is a symbolic system with the essential function of expressing meaning.As the most important communication tool,language expresses infinite meaning through the combination of finite symbols.Vocabulary and grammar are the subordinate categories of language components:the former expresses specific lexical meaning and the latter expresses abstract grammatical meaning.A language,whether specific to the form or general to the text,is composed of lexical and grammatical components.When communicating,people will naturally extract corresponding lexical and grammatical components from the spare language system for temporary assembling an expression with a specific meaning.The descriptive linguistics describe all lexical components and lexical components to establish the complete lexical system and grammatical system of a language.In any language,the discovery and collection of lexical system is relatively comprehensive and extensive,compared with which,the study on grammatical system is still insufficient.While to establish a complete grammatical system,there lies a premise to find out all the grammatical units which express the system.Grammar is a rule.The so-called "’rule’ is a specific form that expresses specific meanings"2.Therefore,to find out the rule of grammar,we must combine the specific grammatical form with the specific grammatical meaning correspondingly.Professor Zhang Dingjing mentioned in Substantive Grammar Theory:Methodology of Kazakh Description Grammar(2015)that the traditional boundaries between morphology and syntax should be broken and all the dissociative tagmemes which originally belong to this category should be incorporated in order to establish a complete grammatical system.The primary step should be taken to discover and collect all the tagmemes of that system and then arrange them according to the form and meaning to help the language learners for better understanding and expressing.For a language learner,the more regular the language is,the easier the learning will be,and vice versa.Kazakh is a language with profound and various forms.A configuring suffix component which belongs to the supplementary components can be suffixed to all members of a class of vocabulary to form a speech structure with infinite number,which can be flexibly used to express identical meaning universally.It is classified to the "lexeme" level and able to change the grammatical form of a word.While word-configuring affixes can be only affixed to a class of members to form new words with finite numbers.There is no regular rule for learning,since it cannot be used flexibly nor universally.They are word-configuring morpheme which should be classified to the"morpheme" level.This makes non-native speakers who learn this language getting confused,and also getting language researchers into trouble when collecting and concluding the language.Although word-configuring affixes,as lexical units,cannot be used flexibly and regularly,they are treated equally with grammatical system study and lexical system study for establishing a complete language system.Though a word-configuring affix can only be affixed to a small number of words,they should also be taken into consideration and categorized correspondingly for clearer classification and easier accessible of usage.As a consequence,this dissertation is not limited in discussing about grammatical units configured by forms(configuration suffix),function words,word order,overlap,intonation and synthesis,but also includes lexical units composed of word-configuring morphemes(word-configuring affixes),notional words,inserts,specific sentence patterns,etc.This dissertation consists of four chapters,with each chapter classified below:Chapter Ⅰ:to point out the significance and purpose of the study on the certain and uncertain mood of Kazakh language.Making attempts to make a literature review on former studies,clear the study object,point out the research methodologies,and explain the source of the corpus and the phonetic symbols used in this dissertation.Chapter Ⅱ:to define the notion of certain and uncertain mood,to make a theoretical exposition and explain its extension,and to clear the boundaries among certain-uncertain,positive-negative,and definite-indefinite.Chapter Ⅲ:to discuss the member,distribution,and functions of the meaning of certain-uncertain mood as a grammatical category with the leading of forms.Chapter IV:with the leading of meaning,to classify entire members of subordinate categories of certain-uncertain mood meaning,to describe specific members according to their meaning characteristics by the order of name,meaning and content,and expressing forms,and to establish a sub-system of certain-uncertain mood meaning by comparing and analyzing the likeness and difference among synonymous members.The conclusion will conclude and review the entire thesis.Meanwhile,it will point out the innovation point and clarify problems or shortcomings to overcome.