On Typology And Universals Of Chinese Coordinate Phrases

Through the study and analysis of Chinese CP(coordinate phrases), this paper explores some common linguistic features between Chinese and some other languages in the world as well as some typical language type features in Chinese CP. The whole paper is divided into five parts.Introduction. It summarizes the present situation of the study of Chinese CP. It analyses the importance of the research of typology and universals and puts forward the main problems to be investigated and theoretical approaches to be adopted. It also introduces the main content for research in the paper.Chapter 1. By combining some similar phenomena in some languages in Sino-Tibetan family and other families, the paper first analyses the markedness in Chinese CP in which the two phenomena "unmarked" and "marked" coexist in some Sino-Tibetan languages while "unmarked" is nonexistent in languages in some other families. The relationship between the coordinate items in Chinese is included, which is in contrast with the external feature of the coordinate relation in some languages of some families such as English, Russian, French, Latin and so on. The Chinese CP have a few oft-used means marking coordinate relation.The existence or nonexistence of connective marks depends upon the impact of a few factors: semantic factors, pragmatic factors and formal factors. The proximity principle related to CP puts stress on linguistic meaning. The study of grammatical problems usually involves different levels, including form, meaning and use. They can combine and verify each other.Chapter 2. The paper rather explicitly analyses the typical phenomena and characteristics in CP in some languages represented by Chinese. According to the hierarchies of typicality of CP and the relevance of syntactic functions to markedness, the paper demonstrates the relevant model of markedness of syntactic functions. CP finds its typicality in its symmetry. The symmetric typicality possesses a hierarchical continuity: meaning symmetry (+), formal symmetry (+) > meaning symmetry (+), formal symmetry ( - ) >meaning symmetry ( - ), formal symmetry ( + ) > meaning symmetry ( - ), formal symmetry( - ) .The meaning connection in CP constructs a continuity: sameness priority >harmony from sameness and difference >difference priority. The CP with harmony from sameness and difference counts as the most typical type in linguistic meaning. In way of the typicality of CP, we advance the viewpoint of "meaning is prior to form" .Chapter 3. The paper studies five key common features related to CP among languages. In markedness, the Chinese CP is weak and English CP is strong. The Chinese Cp is characterized as strong iconicity while English CP is characterized as weak iconicity. Besides different class of meaning, Chinese Cp also has different class of form. All the above features demonstrate the Chinese language type --paratactic language.Conclusion. It sums up the content of the whole paper and raises some problems to be solved in the study.The paper mainly adopts inductive method and makes quantitative and qualitative analysis. It employs cognitive linguistic theories to analyse the typical language type features in Chinese CP, and, on some reliable bases, analyses the cognitive motivations about linguistic structural features. While contrasting with other type languages, itsets forth a few significant linguistic universal principlesand features. From every linguistic perspective--form,use and meaning, it makes original research and analysis of Chinese CP. The content for the research aims to offer a few common-place remarks by way of introduction so that others may come up with valuable opinions in making research in language contrast and cross-linguistic typology and universals by using cognitive linguistic theories. It also aims to have certain reference value and play positive propelling function to bi-lingual instruction and Chinese teaching to foreign students.