Modern Chinese Focus Structure

This dissertation first makes a general survey of the research on the relationship between focus and information structure, the definition and categorization of focus, and the manifestation of focus, and then clarifies the manifestation of focus information structure and the redefinition of focus. On the basis of such a clarification and redefinition, a new system of categorization with two levels and three divisions is formulated, and the syntactic manifestation of focus structure in Chinese is also discussed. Taking semantic functional grammar as the basic theoretical device and with resort to theories on information structure, cognitive linguistics, formal semantics and formal pragmatics, this dissertation then makes a research on a lot of relating problems, such as the history of grammaticalization of "lai来" as a focus marker in Chinese, the association with focus in negative sentences, the information structure of sentences with "hai还", the sequential combinations of focusing adverbs, and demonstrates the effect of the shift of focus structure on the evolution of focusing markers, the interpretation rule of negative sentences, the interpretation condition ofnegators, and one sentence-one focus principle.Chapter One gives an illustration of the theoretical basis and approaches employed in the research, and outlines the basic problems to be discussed, and then pinpoints the likely flaws involved in the research and possible further research orientations.Chapter Two is devoted to an analysis of the two basis of focus information structure and two manifestations, the former consisting of the theme-rheme structure and given-new structure, and the latter of topic-focus structure and presupposition -focus structure.Chapter Three first comments the existing researches on the definition and categorization of focus, and then redefines the concept of focus from perspective of the information-structural relation. Focus, after this sort of redefinition, is the prominent information items the speaker tries to deliver to the hearer in a given communication, and thus is assumed capable for the hearer to renew the given knowledge; such a renewal process is represented by information addition and replacement. A new system of categorization with two levels and three divisions is then formulated, in which sentence focus is first determined under sentence units, and then the syntactic focus is further divided into regular focus and contrastive focus, with "prominent", "contrastive", "exhaustive", "exclusive", "presupposition type", "marked" and "scope" as the primary parameter characters. Thus a sentence-based categorization system is achieved concerning the focus. A discussion then is allocated to the quantity of focus in a sentence. Here a survey is given to three types of multiple focus and the related discussion of unique focus, and then it is concluded that single sentences are unique focused.Chapter Four first asserts that focus by its nature is category of representation, carrying certain semantic content, and is always realized by certain syntactic elements, and represented by certain grammatical structure, and is combined with other syntactic elements into focus structure. The syntactic focus structure is the semantic structure formed at the syntactic level with the representation of focus at the syntactic level, such as end focus structure, tripartite structure, and is always contrasted with the focus information structure formed in the process of information transmission and reception. Then an analysis is allocated to the linguistic manifestations of focus, including accent, focus marker, focus-sensitive operator and its associated structure, and syntactic structures, such as syntactic elements at certain position and shift of syntactic order. An illustration is made especially on focus markers in Chinese, and a contrastive analysis is made on the difference and similarities between English and Chinese in terms of focus-sensitive operator.Chapter Five discusses first the grammaticalization process of the turning of the Chinese verb "lai来" from a directional verb to a focus marker, and then ascertain that the inner motivation of the process is the syntactic formula of "VP1+ (NP1) +lai来+VP2+ (NP2) " and the semantic bleaching of the meaning of " lai来" for spatial motion. After a simple comparison between the process and the grammaticalization of "shi是" into a focus marker, we conclude that the position of syntactic focus and the change of focus structure is an important factor inducing the evolution of focus marker.Chapter Six is devoted first to comments on some statements on negation and focus, such as the scopelessness of negation, the separation of negation and focus, and then it points out that it is basically a consensus that negators have their scope, and that negation is association with focus, on the basis of which a interpretation rule of negative sentence and the modified interpretation conditions of negators are proposed. With resort to the statement that negation makes no shift of the presupposition of a sentence, this chapter also discusses the relationship between focus and presupposition, which should be constructed at the semantic information level; presupposition is not syntactically manifested, and focus is syntactically manifested by certain focus elements that can be developed into focus structure; single sentences are unique focused, but can be multiple presupposed, one of which is corresponded with the focus. Regular focus and contrastive focus are presupposition-corresponded, and syntactic focus is presupposition-free.Chapter Seven proposes that the focus structure of the sentence type of "(W[Y]), hai还W [X] )" is a focus-associated tripartite structure, while " (X bi比Y hai还W)" is a sentence focus, thus does not have a focus structure. After an ascertainment that the basic semantic meaning of "hai还" is to express continuing increment, the dissertation argues that, in the focus-associated structure of the sentence "(W[Y]), hai还W [X] )", the direction of association of the focusing adverb "hai还" is closely related to the type of the increment expressed: suppose that the ordinary increment is left-associated, the meta-linguistic increment is right-associated; if the ordinary increment is right-increment, the meta-linguistic increment is left-associated. A further debate is made on the sentence type of " (X bi比Y hai还W le了)", whose validity is challenged.Chapter Eight first argues on the basis of corpus searches that the combination of Chinese focusing adverbs "ye也, hai还, you又, dou都, zhi只" can only be used successively in sequential combinations, without any interval, while in reverted sequences they can be used with intervals, but not successively. With resort to this conclusion, this chapter makes a further statement, on the basis of the proposition in the 3^rd section of Chapter Three that single sentences are unique-focused, that single sentences are exempted from the number of focus operators, and thus are always unique-focused. Information structure is to some extent hierarchical, and the focus operators "ye也, hai还, you又, dou都, zhi只" are different in scope, associated direction and hierarchy, it is inferred, according to the iconicity principle, that when these focus adverbs are used successively in a construction, only the component associated with the most outer operator that has the widest scope are the prominent information, that is the focus of a sentence. After a comparison with the study of Krifka (1992), a discussion on the Chinese expression of "Sue also2 onlyl introduced Bill1 to John2.", and an analysis of the relationship between negators and the syntactic focus beyond its scope, this chapter finally concludes that the one sentence-one focus principle is language universal, thus is a guarantee of the translative precision of focus manifestation between different languages.