A Study On The Co-occurrence Of Interrogative Pronouns Within Modern Chinese Clauses

This dissertation mainly studies the co-occurrence of interrogative pronouns within modern Chinese clauses. With the combination of form and meaning, structure and function, static description and inductive analysis, the co-occurrence of 25 interrogative pronouns is examined in this study. The materials are extracted from the Corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics Peking University (CCL PKU). The formal features, rules of the co-occurrence, interrogative usages and non-interrogative usages of the two or more than two co-occurrent interrogatives are described and analyzed through statistics. The study aims to expose the syntactic rules, semantic features and pragmatic functions of the interrogative and non-interrogative usages.The following is a description of six chapters of the study:Chapter one is the introduction. First, it explains the title. Then it briefly reviews the literature of clauses, modern Chinese interrogatives, and the co-occurrence of interrogatives. After that, it points out the existing problems, puts forward the future topic, and shows the significance of the present study. Finally, this chapter summarizes the contents, methodology, and sources of the corpus.Chapter two, composed of four parts, addresses the research of four categories and their formal features, focusing on rules of the co-occurrence of interrogatives, on the basis of abundant instances and statistic data. The four categories named are:the co-occurrence of the same interrogative pronouns with successive usages, the same interrogative pronouns with separated usages, the different interrogative pronouns with successive usages, and the different interrogative pronouns with separated usages. Part one discusses the features of the first category in its construction, word frequency, language style, syllable rhyme, and syntactic components. Part two explains the features of the second category in its construction, rules of the distribution, genres of co-occurrent items and their relations, especially rules of chain clauses. Part three illustrates the features of the third category in its construction, form matching etc. Part four analyzes the features of the fourth category in its construction and functions.Chapter three looks into interrogative meanings of co-occurrent interrogative pronouns, the corresponding numbers between co-occurrent interrogative pronouns and interrogative focuses by analyzing syntactic structures. Among the four different categories, co-occurrent interrogative pronouns may contain either interrogative or non-interrogative meanings. Interrogative particles also have an influence on the interrogative meanings of co-occurrent interrogative pronouns.Chapter four makes a meticulous investigation on both non-interrogative usages of co-occurrent interrogative pronouns and references. Ten non-interrogative usages of co-occurrent interrogative pronouns are discussed. Definite and indefinite characteristics and meanings of referencial functions are described deliberately. After that, the successive usages, separated usages, and singled usages are differentiated. Fnally, the reasons surrounding the loss of interrogative meanings of co-occurrent interrogative pronouns are analyzed.Chapter five mainly compares similarities and differences of co-occurrent interrogatives in Chinese and English clauses. Emphasis is laid on sentence patterns, interrogative usages and non-interrogative usages. As far as sentence patterns are concerned, Chinese interrogatives co-occur in four categories, while English interrogatives co-occur in three categories. In interrogative usages, Chinese interrogatives belong to the wh-in-situ language, English interrogatives are the multiple wh-fronting. In non-interrogative usages, Chinese interrogatives, playing a very important role, have referential functions, such as subjunctive reference, arbitrary reference, and mutual reference. While the corresponding English pronouns become indefinite ones instead of interrogative ones.Chapter six in conclusion summarizes the topic, which presents a cross-chapter summary and identifies the problems that have remained hitherto unsolved and therefore need further exploration.