Studies Of Comparative Category In Mandarin Chinese

This dissertation focuses on the comparative category in Mandarin Chinese. Though there was a vast literature on comparative constructions and comparative category, many problems have been left unsolved. The dissertation deals with Mandarin comparative category under approaches of cognitive linguistics and semantics, emphasizing on generality of all comparative constructions.The dissertation is divided up into eight chapters. The first one introduces why the subject was chosen and the theories, approaches and corpus used in the dissertation.Chapter two reviews main studies on this subject from six aspects. They are establishments of the category, syntactic and pragmatic studies of comparative constructions, grammaticalizing process of Bi- construction, typological research of comparative construction and children's acquisition of Bi-construction.The third chapter proposes eight attributes of comparative category under approaches of prototype category theory. Then some constructions and elements, such as 'yue lai yue', 'Lian....dou/ye', 'hen', 'ye' and 'bijiao' etc., that were regarded as members of the category can be proved problematic with those attributes. Then prototypical members of the category are presented. The category is a continuous category with fuzzy boundaries.Chapter four concentrates on negation of the category. It starts out from general negation of a gradable scale that is characteristic of negation of construction P yielding 'less than P'. Comparative results form a gradable scale, so negation of a comparative construction yield a contrary, not contradictory negation. Then meanings and functions of negation constructions , Bushizui, Buxiang, Bubi, Meiyou and Burn are argued. This chapter ends with discussion of phenomena that expressions of different sub-categories transcend each other and sometimes are confused with each other. These can be explained by their similar conceptual structures and features of the continuous gradable scale.The fifth chapter is devoted to syntactic asymmetry phenomena of Bi-construction. It begins with detailed analysis of three main articles that manage to solve the...