A Semantic-Pragmatic Study Of Subject Sentences In Modern Chinese

The patient subject sentence is a kind of sentence which is abnormal in Chinese in which the patient is the subject.The word order form of the sentence pattern is actually the result of the restriction of various conditions in the Chinese system.This article takes the patient subject sentence as the research object,reclassify it based on a self-built corpus,and conducts semantic analysis.It examines the semantic and pragmatic motivations of the sentence pattern and tries to explore the function of the patient subject sentence.From the patient subject sentence,we can see that the "semantic-pragmatic" interface theory is reasonable,the semantics and pragmatics are interactive and related.Firstly,the 670 cases of patient subject sentences selected from the collection are marked for corpus processing on the basis of the "Syntactic and Semantic Category Marker Set",and a new classification system of patient subject sentences is constructed.The system can be divided into two levels.At the first level,the 290 verbs appeared in the sentences are classified according to the category of statement cores,and the patient subject sentences is divided into the coordination core,the speech core,the perception core,the mutagenicity core,the possessing core,the acting core,the joining core,and the judgement core 8 types.At the second level,the patient subject sentence is divided into 28 sub-categories.Among them,there are 12sub-categories with the coordination core,3 sub-categories with the speech core,3sub-categories with the perception core,3 sub-categories with the mutagenicity core,2 sub-categories with the possessing core,2 sub-categories with the acting core,2sub-categories with the joining core,and 1 sub-categories with the judgemnet core.Secondly,based on the new system,this article conducts semantic research on various types of patient subject sentences.On the one hand,it conducts semantic analysis on the VP and NP of the patient subject sentence from the two aspects of formal and semantic features.On the other hand,it generalizes the semantic structure mode of the patient subject sentence,and summarizes the characteristics of the patient subject sentence in different modes.According to the final result,there are 28 semantic structure patterns in the patient subject sentence.When analyzing the semantic structure patterns,we study the whole sentence meanings they express,summarize the semantic types of verbs that enter the sentence pattern according to the "Tag Set of Lexical Semantics",and perform the semantic feature analysis of the verbs with reference to the "Syntax Category Semantic Marks Set",we also extract the role categories of the NP.Thirdly,according to the research theme of the thesis,this article determines to explore and analyze the semantic and pragmatic motivations of the sentence’s generation.On the one hand,there are three semantic reasons: the subject element is highlighted,the subject and the verb maintain a close and flexible relationship,and the subject element pursues a defined expression.On the other hand,there are four pragmatic reasons: the speaker’s choice of topic and focus,and the sentence’s adaptation to different environment,the arrangement of topic cohesion and transformation,and the pursuit of sentence pattern diversity.When investigating the semantic motivation of the sentence generation,this article chooses to start with the characteristics of the internal components of the sentence pattern and the relationship between the internal components;when investigating the pragmatic motivation of the sentence generation,this article chooses to start with two application scenarios: verbal communication and texts.In addition,comparing the patient subject sentence with related sentence patterns,the characteristics of the patient subject sentence are: the subject is regarded as a single prominent object,whether the agent appears is related to the clarity of the give-receiver relationship;the patient subject sentence tends to appears in the colloquial style;the sentence pattern can comment on things,including their states and results.Finally,through the above research,this article finds that the widespread existence and use of the patient subject sentence is restricted by both semantics and pragmatics,and there is no clear boundary between them.They influence each other,entangled with each other.This article holds the view that there is relevance between semantics and pragmatics with the patient subject sentence as an example,and provides new examples for the "semantic-pragmatic" interface theory in Chinese,thereby enriching the "semantic-pragmatic" interface theory.Owing to the subjective and objective factors,there are still areas to be improved in this article.Especially for the study of the "semantic-pragmatic" interface,this article only stays at the stage of using the patient subject sentence to exemplify the theory,and has not yet involved in-depth exploration of the interaction mechanism.The research is superficial in this respect.Therefore,the application of the "semantic-pragmatic" interface theory to Chinese is awaiting in-depth research by subsequent scholars.