Study Of Quantity In Modern Chinese Adjectives

Based on a survey of the frequently used adjectives in modern Chinese language, this thesis is meant to discuss the subject of "quantity" of adjectives. Some theories and approaches of semantics and cognitive linguistics are adopted here to clarify the quantitative characteristics of adjectives, on the basis of which the adjective are classified. And then, the correlation between the quantitative characteristics of adjectives and their grammatical behavior is unveiled by means of language data research. Firmly based upon the linguistic facts in Chinese, this thesis has pointed out the problems that have existed in the research of "quantity" and has rectified some laws connected with "quantity".This thesis, which is made up of 5 chapters, contains 150 thousand Chinese characters.The first chapter is an introduction of the research object, the theories, approaches and the language data that is employed.The second chapter discusses the "quantity category" and the quantitative characteristic. To begin with, the previous researches on the quantity category is reviewed before we choose the most favorable perspective for studying Chinese adjectives, that is to analyze properties from the cognitive semantic structure of quantity. It is our opinion that adjectives describe both the "quality" and "quantity" of properties. Some adjectives, which do not need comparison, only describe the "quality" of properties and are irrelevant with "quantity", while others, which do need comparison, describe both the "quality" and "quantity" of properties. "quantity", which is created by relative property and variability of quality, consists of "static quantity" vs "dynamic quantity" and "absolute quantity" vs "comparative quantity", which are interwoven. On the basis of this, there are four sub-category: "Class times quantit","Amount","static comparative quantity","dynamic comparative quantity".According to the size of quantity category, the quantity related Chinese adjectives can be classified into different levels of quantity. In this thesis, four degree adverbials "shaowei,bijiao,hen,zui" are used in collocation with the adjectives. Those that can be modified by the above four adverbials are classified as class A; those that come together with all but "shaowei " are classified as class B; those that do not come together with "shaowei" and "bijiao" are classified as class C; those that usually come together with "hen" are classified as class D. There is another kind that do not come together with anything. Therefore, there are five levels of quantity. The closer an adjective is to class A, the more consistent it is, and the bigger its quantity category is; the closer it is to state adjective, the more independent its quantity is, and the smaller its quantity category is.In chapter three, on the basis of the quantitative characteristics of adjectives, efforts have been made to investigate their roles as attribute, predicate, adverbial modifier and complement in order to discover what restrictions the quantitative characteristics have imposed on their syntactic behavior and how effective these restrictions are. With the Beijing dialect employed as major language data, this thesis has chose 250 adjectives from the most frequently used ones, 50 from each level of quantity. Mainly in consideration of whether they come together with "de,di,de" and the form of alone/non-alone, we count up the conditions in four syntactic positions.We found it an incorrect view that "attributive qualitative adjective is unmarked, predicate stative adjectives is unmarked". It should be pointed out that the more consistent Chinese adjectives are, the freer they are; the more independent they are, the more they are restricted. Therefore, Stative adjectives in all syntactic positions are marked, most of class A and class B are unmarked, while class C and D lie between them. Stative adjectives is generally restricted to such uses as descriptive attribute, descriptive predicate, descriptive adverbial modifier, and descriptive complement, prescriptive attribute, prescriptive predicate, prescriptive adverbial modifier, and prescriptive complement,We found it an incorrect view that "attributive qualitative adjective is unmarked, predicate stative adjectives is unmarked". It should be pointed out that the more consistent Chinese adjectives are, the freer they are; the more independent they are, the more they are restricted. Therefore, Stative adjectives in all syntactic positions are marked, most of class A and class B qualitative adjective are unmarked, while class C and D qualitative adjective lie between them. Stative adjectives is generally restricted to such uses as descriptive attribute, descriptive predicate, descriptive adverbial modifier, and descriptive complement, generally the form of alone as static predicate,the results complement,description complement, in the attributive,adverbiak complement position, generally by adding "de,di,de"; But qualitative adjective restricted to such uses as descriptive attribute, descriptive predicate, descriptive adverbial modifier, and descriptive complement, can be used for prescriptive attribute, prescriptive predicate, prescriptive adverbial modifier, and prescriptive complement, either under the form of alone as a variety of predicate and complement, but also together with other ingredients together for predicate,complements, in the attributive,adverbial,complement position, both of increasing "de,di,de" the sample sentence, there are not "de,di,de" samples.It is also discovered that quantitative characteristic only reflects orientation, but does not predict any particular phenomenon; rhythm also plays an important role in the usage of adjectives, especially the qualitative adjective.In chapter four, we discussed the subjectivity of adjectives. It is pointed out that the perspective of subjectivity is necessary in determining class time quantit of adjectives, and adjectives are frequently used in the sentences that convey the speaker's subjective attitude and emotions, therefore adjectives are more subjective than nouns and verbs.The subjective quantity of Chinese adjectives are examined in three aspects: (1) appearance of quantity and adjective reduplications (2) Adjectives with the speaker's tone (3) "Adjective+ (一)点" sentence typeChapter five is a conclusion of main contents of research of this thesis.