The Subjectification Process Of Chinese Adverbs

From the perspective of diachronic typology, which places the Chinese adverb in a broader language background, this paper attempts to explore the nature of adverb issues. It takes the universal human cognitive function as the basic research approach; and do not adhere to the traditional terms'constraints, (such as noun, verb, adverbial, predicate and other statements), starting with the "meaning" of language which includes reference meaning, structure meaning and pragmatic meaning, holds that the adverb is a pragmatic meaning of the function word.Pragmatic meaning is the subjective language meaning. The language subjectivity derived from the feature of "pointing and demonstrative " in language. The "pointing-demonstrative "is a turn-talking action of discourse, which includes "pointing out" and "demonstrative" two functions. Sentence is a "pointing-demonstrative" action; and it is made of the "original" concept element, the "fingers" functional element and the "here-now" concept element. The "original" concept is a "type" concept; and the "here-now" concept is a "token" concept. The type-token index structure is the key standard to judge whether a language form is a sentence or not. The concept elements in the sentence can hardly constitute the type-token relationship without the help of function words. Function words have not only deictic and restrict functions but also have correlative function. Prepositions, conjunctions and other function words which correlative function features are prominent, while deictic function features are looming. Correspondingly, adverbs'correlative function features are looming; and deictic function features are prominent. Subjectivity is a prominent feature of adverbs, which can not be construed without being put into sentence.The whole paper is divided into three parts.The first part consists of introduction, chapterland chapter 2, which mainly points out the research meaning of adverb as well as adopts research method, explains the current status of adverb study home and abroad; and then discusses the defining problems of adverbs, and puts forward a new standard definition of adverb.Traditional Chinese adverb studies tend to focus only on describing the phenomena but lack systematic explanation. In recent years, scholars at home and abroad frequently use formal semantics and grammaticalization theory to study Chinese adverb; and trend to overlap and fusion the form and function, syntax and pragmatics, semantics and other linguistic theory schools in adverbs research area. Unfortunately, there are "few attempts at an overall theory". In the current research context, this paper attempts to explore the nature of adverb issues from the universal human cognitive function point of view.In the past definition of adverb, the meaning standard does not meet the requirements of the "common character", the term of functional standard does not define clearly; and this made the definition of adverbs always rational groundless.The problem is that scholars took other undefined or fussy concepts as a prerequisite to define adverbs. It seems objective to define adverb with the distribution rules; however, in fact, there are lot of methodology and logic problems. The meaning of language includes reference meaning, structure meaning and pragmatic meaning. The meta-language of reference meaning words is "external world", the structure meaning words'meta-language is other words, and the pragmatic meaning words' meta-language is the speaker. Academics always confused structure meaning and pragmatic meaning with the concept of function; and then confused function and distribution. Therefore, function is actually a vague criteria for the classification of parts of speech. So, in fact, those outwardly opposed to take meaning as the criteria for the classification of parts of speech are still using meaning standard unconsciously.Therefore, we proceed from the referential meaning of concept; firstly divided it into content words and function words; and then divided into pragmatic meaning and non-pragmatic meaning with the criteria of pragmatic meaning, those words whose pragmatic meaning overlapped with the function words are called adverbs.The second part consists of chapter 3, chapter 4 and chapter 5, which mainly discussed the subjectivity of language and its sources; and explaines some key concepts' connotation, such as "pointing and demonstrative ", type-token, sentence, as well as their interrelationships.Pragmatic meaning is the relation meaning between the language users and the language symbols. It is always called catch-all meaning in academic circle, since scholars often associats the pragmatic meaning with the dependent variable concept of context. In order to avoid the ambiguity of pragmatic meaning, we chose subjectivity in this argument to replace it. Subjectivity refers to the speaker's "self" performance components in the discourse, which originated from the language features of "pointing and demonstrative". Meaning is a relationship. The meaning of "pointing and demonstrative" also derived from the structure relationship. Language "pointing and demonstrative" systems can be classified as "deixis " and "index". "Deixis" is that the reference object appeared in the live scene of discourse; and "index" is that the reference object did not appear in the live scene of discourse. In language, it mainly rely on the sentence to fulfill the function of "index". The internal structure of sentence can be constructed as:sentence= "original" concept element+the "fingers" functional element+the "here-now" concept element. It is a type-token relation between the "original" concept and the "here-now" concept, which formed a "index" structure.Meaning is the final question of language study. The criteria for words definition is meaning, and in the same light, to define a sentence still depends on the meaning. However, the meaning of sentence is not fully equivalent to the meaning of traditional propositions mentioned. The distinguished essential meaning of sentence is the subjective meaning of modal composition, which is not valued in the traditional proposition meaning. Just because of this subjectivity, it can put "the objective items" into "original" and "here-now" concepts, compose a type-token relation, and forms a "pointing and demonstrative" frame. Sentence is a "pointing and demonstrative" action, which exists in between the addresser and the addressee. A complete sentence must be established on the condition of type-token relation.The third part consists of chapter 6, chapter 7and chapter8. It mainly discusses the deixis and correlative function of adverbs from the two aspects that are:the relation of deixis meaning and content word's grammaticalization; the differences between adverb and function words. Adverb is of deixis, restrict and correlative meaning in sentence. Subjectivity is the salient features of adverb, which can not be construed without sentence. The difference between adverbs and content words is whether there are the referential meaning of concept. As a internal category of function word, the difference between adverbs and other function words is that adverbs possesses the salient deixis meaning and covert correlative meaning. Adverbs is a transition category between content words and function words.The typical pattern of content word's grammaticalization is the concept meaning of deixis pronoun becoming more and more bleach, and deixis meaning becoming more and more salient. The motivation of content word's grammaticalization comes from pragmatic inference. The key factor of pragmatic is "pointing and demonstrative", therefore, the basic mode of pragmatic inference is the both sides of discourse communicating with "pointing and demonstrative", among which had relation with pragmatic inference is deixis.A large number of language materials show that deixis pronouns most likely occurred into grammaticalization. Deixis pronoun is both a replace function and a deixis function, and it is different from pronoun in traditional sense. The so-called "pronoun" includes pronouns, which is both a replace function and a deixis function, and deixises, which is just pointing function and no replacing function. The relational nouns, vector verbs, personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns are all the typical members of "pointing and demonstrative" words, and the common patterns of content word's grammaticalization often happened to those "pointing and demonstrative" words.In sentence index, the content words are pointed and demonstrated by the pattern of type-token relation; and this requires the restrict and correlative function words to accomplish it. Therefore, the function words primarily grammaticalized from content words with the meaning of "pointing and demonstrative". The result of content word's grammaticalization is the concept category meaning of content words lost, the deixis and correlative meaning be strengthened. The grammaticalization of content word is a continuous process, most of which started from content word, by the way of adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and clitics, until a zero form. In which, adverb is the "first stop", therefore, adverbs are the major members of function words in quantity, and from a meaning point of view, adverbs have more correlative function than content words, more deixis function than other function words.Chapter 9 is the conclusion.