A Study Of Conditioning Mechanism Of Definiteness With Special Reference To Chinese And English

Definiteness is a rather complicated semantic category in the Chinese language, in which its conditioning factors and mechanism are not quite clear yet. But it is an overt grammatical category, and its realization and conditioning mechanism are clearly discernible in the English language. What are its conditioning factors and mechanism and what are the similarities and differences in the rules that guide the realization of definiteness in the two languages --- which motivated the present study and the results can be shon as follows:In investigation of definiteness on the level of semantic implication --- one of the conditioning factors, we find that the two languages share the same feature that Proper nouns, determiners and numerals have the same semantic component of definiteness except that Chinese has no articles.In examining definiteness on the level of syntactical structure --- another conditioning factor, for one of the Chinese special structures you-clauses, the corpus of three novels, etc. built in the study is used for the purpose. We recognize three categories of indefinite subjects with their features indicated, explains the way"you"can/must be prefixed to an indefinite subject; for some special structures of the language we find that a definite subject in presentative sentence is usually the one in expectation, that definite objects of"you"structure are universal, and that the N1 and N2 exchangeable sentence N1 V N2 has its own rules guiding N1 /N2's definiteness.In checking English sentence patterns for definiteness with reference to those of Chinese, we find that there are less structural patterns in the English language, and that although the ordinary sentence pattern N1 V N2 rejects indefinite N1 or definite N2, it can do nothing but pass the duty to determiners. Sentences in inverted order -- except for those introduced with a negation phrase or adjectival phrase -- usually employ definite expressions as their subjects, while the corresponding Chinese presentative sentences frequently use indefinite objects.In discussing NPs in context --- still another conditioning factor, the corpus is used again --- liangren and lianggeren, both meaning two people, are retrieved for the purpose. The results show that frequency of definite liangren and lianggeren (>90%) is much higher than that of the indefinite ones, and that they are definite when used anahorically with only one exception that a nunmerical term referring back to a part of a numerical term is indefinite, but indefinite otherwise. It is also true of other Num. + Ns. Bare NPs are definite when they are anaphoric or exophoric, otherwise indefinite. But in English definite must go with the in the above two cases. Finally proper nouns and the like will lose their extensions as attributive predicative, which is also true of English.In further analysis of the factors, we find another conditioning factor --- sentence denoting, and propose a hypothesis"Irrealis clauses denote indefinite or generic". After verifying the hypothesis in English, a rule based on Shih Yuzhi's developed: Irrealis clauses denote indefinite or generic; in realis clauses N1 can get definiteness and N2 indefiniteness in the structure N1 V N2, but lexical marking overwhelms structure strength, and yields to context conditioning. This rule also works in English, but articles/determiners are compulsory in the language, which blurred the effect of the structure or the context.In conclusion, the Chinese and the English languages share the same features of definiteness of lexical meaning. Similarly, structure, context, and sentence denoting have similar effect on definiteness in the two languages. The difference lies in realization of definiteness with grammatical markers, which are compulsory in English but absent in Chinese, hence the decisive role of conspiracy of lexical meaning, syntactical implication, contextual information, and sentence denoting in the language.