And Adjective Overlap

The study on adjective reduplication has always been the hot topic of modernChinese grammar study and the achievements are also plentiful. Nevertheless, fromthe perspective of being a Thai student, there are many problems worth researchingin this topic. This dissertation mainly discusses the issue of the difference of quantityfeature between adjective reduplication form and its basic form, also the issue ofreduplication forms of adjective subcategorization such as the homoionym adjectives,the qualitative adjectives that have ABAB duplication form, monosyllabic adjectivesof color and measure adjectives etc.Chapter1is an introduction.Chapter2, first of all, discusses about the scope of adjectives involved with thisdissertation. Secondly, summarizes the conditions that can make the adjectivesreduplicate from the former researches, which are the semantic conditions, theformation of adjectives, pragmatic conditions and phonetic conditions. And then,based on the point that the adjective reduplications are openness, the author cancollect some of newly reduplicated adjectives from the dictionaries. The result alsocomes out that some of them don’t suit with the above conditions. Finally, accordingto the statistics, some homoionym adjectives also don’t suit with the aboveconditions. Therefore, to find the difference between reduplicated andnon-reduplicated homoionym adjectives, this chapter also talks about the syntacticand semantic features of homoionym adjectives, hoping that the outcome could beuseful for the further study of the reason why some of homoionym adjectives can’tbe reduplicated.Chapter3discusses the difference between adjective reduplication forms andits basic forms, it mainly focuses on their quantity features. Based on the formerresearches, the adjective reduplication forms and its basic forms will act differently inthe different syntactic components. This chapter reveals that such a difference is theresult of the interaction between quantity feature and syntactic surroundings, thequantity feature of adjectives will change according to the different syntactic surroundings. For example, when the adjective reduplication forms act as theattribute, many of them have to add de. This is because when the adjectivereduplicates, its quantity feature has already been changed, in order to continueacting as the attribute, the sentence has to be adjusted.Chapter4, based on the concept of dynamicalization, continues researching onsome aspects of qualitative adjectives in ABAB reduplication forms. Firstly, aftercomparing with “Vyixia” and “AByixia”, it shows that the qualitative adjectives inABAB reduplication forms not only mean using the short period or a few times ofmovement to finish the state, but in some sentences also can express the mild tone.Secondly, in order to make the characteristic of ABAB reduplication forms moreclearly, this chapter also compares it with dynamic adjectives and othersreduplication forms. And then, divides the dynamicalization of each ABABreduplication form into different levels, few of them have quite high level ofdynamicalization, such as Qingxingqingxing. Many of them have low level ofdynamicalizaiton, for example Liangkuailiangkuai. Finally, this chapter also exploresthe motivation and mechanism of ABAB reduplication form’s dynamicalization.Chapter5takes12monosyllabic adjectives of color as the research object. Itexplores their abilities of reduplication and the difference of their syntactic andsemantic functions. According to the differences shown in the result, themonosyllabic adjectives of color could be divided into four groups which are“white,black,red”,“yellow,blue,green”,“grey,violet,pink” and “orange,brown,tan”.These monosyllabic adjectives of color not only have the difference in syntactic level,but also can be varied from the lexical level. Moreover, when looking from author’smother language (which is Thai language), most of the results are similar to Chinese,only few of them are different. The differences of the monosyllabic adjectives ofcolor exploring above can be explained from the angle of cognitive linguistics.Chapter6discusses the asymmetry, markedness and markednessrelevance-model of measure adjectives in reduplication form. Normally, themeasure adjectives can be divided into two parts which are positive measureadjectives and negative measure adjectives. The difference of these two types of measure adjective can be shown in asymmetry and markedness aspects. When thesetwo types reduplicate, the difference is the same as their basic form, that is, theformer is unmarkedness, and the latter is markedness. Looking from the angle ofexpressing information, the duplication form of negative measure adjectives tend toexpress counter-expected information. According to the markednessrelevance-model, the three categories which are positive/negative measureadjectives, other positive/negative adjectives and the type of expressing informationcan be formed into two different markedness relevance-models.Chapter7is a conclusion.