| Temporal adverb is a sub-class of adverb,and there have already been lots ofessays about temporal adverbs or relative questions.But it is still necessary for us tocontinue researches on it. Research on temporal adverbs of modern mandarin Chineseis part of the study of modern mandarin Chinese, and is also part of the study of theadverb system. In this dissertation,we have tried to do the description and explanationon this sub-class of adverbs of modern mandarin Chinese ,based on 11 kinds of chosethe 11 kinds of selected corpuses.And we also chose several other corpuses that havebeen studied in the existing essays and several digital corpuses to expand the range ofresearch materials.So this dissertation is mainly of a description-and-explanation style.The main part of the dissertation is composed of seven chapters, about 15 millionwords in all.Chapter One is the introduction part,followed by: the motivation of thedissertation, the actulity of the relative studies, the purpose of this study and researchmethodology of this dissertation, and the range of the corpuses that we selected.Temporal adverb is in the system of time- conveying.The starting point for thieresearch is to find the role that temporal adverb plays within this system.It is also themain problem that we tried to solve in this dissertation. Modern mandarin Chinese isthe connecting part which links the preceding part and the following part of mandarinChinese history.Since 2000,the scope and amount of the researchse on temporaladverbs of modern mandarin,especially of temporal adverbs in appointed corpuses,have been in a upward trend,which shows us that more and more researchers payedattentions on topics in this field.However,there are still much problem left.In-depthstudies with comprehensive methods and more extensive corpuses are still necessary.This study used a combination of description and explanation on each temporaladverb and did simple comparisons among the its deferent performances during the period of history that we chose to survey.We figured out the frequency statistics ofeach temporal adverb in the selected 11 corpuses.We also used theories of philosophy,language typology, syntax theory,grammaticalisation theory and dialect study results inorder to increase the clarity and depth of the explanation. These have specificperformance in the next few chapters. As to the selection of 11 kinds major corpuses,we have taken into account about the length,style of each corpus,and have thinked overwhether they could reflect the character of spoken language of each dynasty (espetiallythe corpus of Yuan Dynasty).How to define temporal adverb and classify them into sub-classes is a problemwhich has never been setlled so far. Therefore, we made our own definiton andclassification about temporal adverb in Chapter Two.Before we discuss these twoquestions,we We first introduce several closely related concepts, namely "time axis","tense", "aspect", "aktionart", "time point " and "time period". These concepts arebasic concepts of researches of temporal adverbs and even the time system inlanguages. Then, we enumerated several existed representative definition andclassification of tempral adver.We pointed out the similarities and differences amongthem,and indicated the problems existed there. Since it is part of the time system, wedecided to use the core concepts in this system,namely"tense" and "aspect",to defineand classify temporal adverb. Adverb that has the function to express the concept oftense or aspect should be called Temporal Adverb. We also took 75 kinds of otherSino-Tibetan languages and dialects of Chineseto be circumstantial evidences.At theend of this chapter,we made not only a new definition for temporal adverb,but alsoclassified the temporal adverbs of modern mandarin Chinese into 19 sub-classesbelonging to 3 main classes.These will be discussed separately in the followingchapters.In Chapter Three, a brief analysis of the differences between temporal adverb andtemporal noun, temporal adverb and conjunction, temporal adverb and situation-likeadverb, and temporal adverb and frequency adverb had been discussed to make furtherclarification about our definition of temporal adverb. This part also helped us to further illustrate the difference of definition and classification of temporal adverb between usand previous researchers.For instance,the conjunction-like-temporal adverb,and whythe frequency adverbs are excluded beyond the temporal adverbs, and so on.In Chapter Four, we explored the tense adverbs of modern mandarin Chinese.What you called tense adverb is an adverb which could express the concept oftense.There are 181 tense adverbs in modern mandarin Chinese,thereinto 46 simpletemporal adverbs and 135 compound temporal adverbs.Tense adverbs can be dividedinto nine sub-classes, respectively conveys the tense information of the distant-past,general-past, near- past,the reference time point,instant-future,near-future,general-future,and the distant-future.Here "Far"and "near" are not strictly physical concept,butwith some subjective judgment.We could see especially clearly between tense adverbsthat convey the tense concept of instant-future and near-future.For the former class,wefeel the event occurred immediately after the reference event,and for the after class wejust feel the event will occur in a shour period of time.There is a special class of tenseadverb which we named not-future-tense adverb. In this section, we discuss severalaspect adverbs which are also belonged to the sub-class of durative-aspect-adverb andaccomplished-aspect-adverb.These temporal adverbs showed a specific limitation ontense unlike other aspect adverbs of the same sub-class that they could not exist whenthe event belonged to any kind of future tense.In Chapter Five, we explore the aspect adverbs of modern mandarin Chinese. Theso-called aspect adverbs are adverbs which could convey the aspect information.Thereare 153 aspect adverbs in modern mandarin Chinese, 42 of which are simple adverbsand 111 of which are compound adverbs.They are divided into 7sub-classes,respectively convey the aspect information of prospective, accomplishment,initiative, experience,progress,duration, and transitoriness.These classification is basedon the reality of modern mandarin Chinese and include each inner time period of anevent.These concept of aspects can also be seen in 75 other Sino-Tibetan languagesand some dialects of Chinese,which we used as circumstantial evidences to explainsome questioms in this chapter.Under each subtitle,we briefly introduced some other ways of aspect expression in Chinese so that we could make comparison betweenaspect adverbs and other aspect-convey-method.At the mention of aspect,we donnotdistinguish the grammatical aspect and lexical aspect as we just borrowed the conceptof aspect in order to explain both the grammatical and the lexical function of aspectadverbs.In Chapter Six, we explore the time-order-adverbs of modern mandarinChinese.Strictly speaking,the so-called time-order-adverb is a special kind of tenseadverb.There are 29 time-order-adverbs in modern mandarin Chinese,15 of which aresimple adverbs and 14 of which are compound adverbs.Finally, in Chapter Seven,we made a summary of the whole dissertation andadded several relative topics of this study which we dinnot mention in previouschapters. We have summarized the structure and sources of temporal adverbs; the"occasionally low-frequency" phenomenon, including the overall low frequency in useof the temporal adverbs in given period of history, in special corpus , as well as thefrequency of use within the same corpus, and so on; We also briefly discussed the"ingredients" and "must-have ingredients"proposed in Gong Qianyan(1993)'sessay.Although we did not studied in detail, but we think this issue is worthy of furtherstudy.Then we summarize the "versatility" of temporal adverbs.The data of ourresearch shows different results with Lu Jianming, Ma Zhen(1985).Then we made abrief analysis of the conception of time in Chinese culture. Finally, we made a full-textsummary,outlines the context of this article pointed out that the innovation and lack ofthe current dissertation. |
