Syntactic And Semantic Study, Negative Words And Adverbs

On the basis of a large quantity of data, this dissertation applies the related theories of functional linguistics, semantics and pragmatics to describing and explaining various syntactic and semantic phenomena when the negatives'bu'and'mei'co-occur with modal adverbs, time adverbs, scope adverbs, and degree adverbs in Mandarin Chinese. It consists of seven chapters. Chapter one, the introduction, addresses the object, significance, theoretical prerequisites, methodology, domestic and foreign survey of the related research, the corpora's origin in this essay.Chapter two begins with describing the word order while the negatives co-occur with the modal adverbs and explaining the rule'modal adverbs>negatives'from typological perspective. Secondly, according to classification of words based on degree of membership,'yiding'is not a modal adverb but a auxiliary verb, therefore'bu'strictly abides by the rule'modal adverbs>negatives'when it co-occur with modal adverbs. The end of this chapter discusses two origins and forming mechanism of negative polar modal adverbs.Chapter three, firstly, describes the word order of co-occurring of negatives with time adverbs and applies the theory of operator and binding to explaining it. Secondly, it discusses the syntactic and semantic differences when the negatives co-occur with the'jingchang and tongchang','conglai and lilai', what's more, analyses the similarities and dissimilarities between'bu jingchang'and'jingchang bu'from their structure, syntactic function, restrictions on VP. Thirdly, the semantic entailment is also covered while the negatives co-occur with the time adverbs. Finally, this chapter points out the symmetry and asymmetry of word order between negatives and time adverbsIn chapter four, after describing and explaining the word order of co-occurring of negatives with scope adverbs, the statistical data is presented to show that it goes against the facts to think that'doubu'is marked negation and'budou'is unmarked one. The so-called phenomena of markedness reversal is reasonable pragmatically and logically. In addition, this chapter analyses three types of semantic change while the negatives co-occur with the scope adverbs: increasing, decreasing and constant;We end with analyzing the motivation of the covert and overt of negatives in the'lian'construction by the theory of pragmatic scale.In chapter five, at the beginning, we describe and explain the word order of co-occurring of negatives with degree adverbs, then mainly focuse on two phrases:'bu hen VP'and'hen bu VP', including their hierarchical structures, the function of'hen'and restrictions on VP. At last, the semantic entailment is analyzed while the negatives co-occur with the degree adverbs.Chapter six diachronically investigates the lexicalization of two constructions:'bu+adverbs'and'adverbs+bu', and puts forward three conditions which can make the incorporation of'X+Y'lexicalize. After that, we generalize the regularity of lexicalization of the two constructions:'bu+X'and'X+bu', when X is an adverb. This chapter ends with explaining why there is asymmetry of the lexicalization of the two constructions by analyzing the relation between negatives and verbs, and the position of negatives in them.Chapter seven is a summary of major findings of this thesis. At the same time, a few suggestions for future research are also presented.