On The Study Of The Hierarchical Distribution Of The Verb's Referentiating In Modern Chinese And Its Typological Reflection

In this paper, we take the verb's referentiating of modern Chinese as research object.On the basis of the thorough exploration on the representation of verb's referentiating,through the comparison with other languages, the common features and individualcharacteristics of the Chinese verb's referentiating are found out. Furthermore, thefactual and theoretical foundation is also found out for dividing verbs from nouns inChinese.Firstly, under the guidance of the categorization theory of cognitive linguistics, thetypical features of Chinese verbs and nouns are established, and then we divide theverb's referentiating into three classes semantically: specific event referentiating,generic event referentiating and reificated event referentiating according to the loss ofverb's features and the acquisition of noun's features in the process of referentiating.Secondly, we take a thorough and systematic exploration on the referentiating ofChinese verbs. On the basis of the comparison with the referentiating in otherlanguages, we divide the referentiating constructions into several classes formally:Sentential,'Deitic+quantifier/numeral+quantifier+Verb', Possesive-Accusative,Possesive,'Empty verb+Verb', Incorporating. Meanwhile, we have discussed therelationship between the semantic types and constructional types of Chinese verb'sreferentiating.Thirdly, on the basis of the verb's referentiating and the achivements about wordclasses at home and abroad, we hold that word classes are grammatical categories inessence and advise that the di-syllabic verbs about the reificated event referentiatingin Chinese can be looked as eventive nouns.Though the comparison with previous studies, the creative points in this paper are:(1)The hierarchy of the verb's referentiating is put out explicitly;(2)In this paper thesimilarities and difference about the referentiating between mono-syllabic anddi-syllabic verbs are expored systematically;(3)The motivation of Chinese verb'sreferentiating is the need for expressing the events and its mechanism is metaphor andmetonymy;(4)The typological features are explored about Chinese berb'sreferentiating for the first time;(5)A constructive suggestion is put forward for thedemarcation of the Chinese verbs and nouns.