A Study On Form Word "De" And Its Related Matters

This dissertation systematically studies the form word "的"in modern Chinese and its related matters with the help of the achievements in cognitive linguistics, dialectology, Chinese history, English grammar, etc. on the principles of integration of form and meaning and of static state and dynamic state under the guidance of Three-plane Grammatical Theory. It aims at furthering the study on "的" to be both descriptive and explanatory on the one hand, and both theoretical and practical on the other. It consists of five chapters and two extra parts: introduction and conclusion. The introduction tells the scope, importance, theory and method of the study and the source of the corpora.Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 discuss the classification of "的". Syntactically, "的" is distributed in two kinds of structures: MH(modification-head) structure and non-MH structure. "的"distributed in the MH structure is called "的1", and "的"distributed in the non-MH structure is called "的2". Pragmatically, both "的1"and"的2"share the same function: mark the prominence of a certain element before them.The so-called structural particles"的"and "地" are simply variants of "的1": they are both distributed in MH structure expressing modification, except that the former is in nominal MH structure and the latter in predicate MH structure, therefore they should be written as one. "得"at the end of the sentence is often written as "的", but it should not be written as"的"in other cases. "的"in the state adjectives "AA的" or "ABB的" is a suffix of the word, which is not to be discussed in the dissertation.Chapter 3 argues that "的"-structure only exists in language situation, including word situation and context situation. It is simply a variant of a MH structure, its head entailed by the situation. It is can be expressed by "X的(Z)". X gives original control on Z and makes it acquire several original referents relating to X. Context gives final control on Z by selecting one definite referent, which is called final referent, from Z and cancel the left referents.Context can adjust the prominence of the original referents. If one of the original referents is of high prominence, the "的"-structure can standwithout a context; if not, it can not stand by itself. Those that cannot stand by themselves may stand in a certain context. The original referent of high prominence is usually selected as a final referent, but it may also be changed to a referent of low prominence and thus canceled by the context. And the original referent of low prominence may be changed to a referent of high prominence and thus selected as a final referent by the context.Chapter 4 discusses "N1的N2"structure. First it tries to prove that"N1的N2"may have two kinds of semantic meanings: possession and attribution, while "N1N2"has only one meaning: attribution. N1 is referential when the structure has the meaning of possession, and it is non-referential when the structure has the meaning of attribution. Then it analyses the motivation and conditions of the ambiguity of "N1的N2"structure. Finally it argues that a"N1的N2"structure without an obvious meaning of modification should also be put to the category of MH structure.Chapter 5 discusses "N的V". It analyses the reason why "V" is still regarded as a verb though it expresses nominal reference by showing the practical method of the grammatical classification of the vocabulary, and the reason why "V" should not be followed by elements like objects or tense particles from the rules of nominal MH structure and from the fact that "V" expresses the nominal reference of a definite event. It also compares "N的V" with "NV" in the position of a subject or an object: the former is of nominal and reference and the latter is of predication and statement.The conclusion summarizes the main views of this dissertation and points out what should be further studied in the future.