| This dissertation studies the Chinese expressions of ordinal categories based on their diversity and tendency, in accordance with examining from general to specific, highlighting the typical phenomena and deepening ideas, by the method of mutual authentication of language form and language meaning as well as the combinated way of qualitative and quantitative methods. It, on the basis of the statistics of 14 million words of Mandarin corpus, detailedly analyzes the semantic construction basis of ordinal categories and the typology of ordinal reference,fully describing the three expression forms of the Chinese ordinal categories. The paper lays emphasis on the grammatical ordinal expressions, revealing its syntactic and semantic features, discussing its typicality and finally summarizing the common syntactic traits of the grammatical ordinal expressions between Chinese minority languages and Chinese itself. In the course of study, language facts and langage theories and research methods are all attached importance, and a scientific expression system of the Chinese ordinal expressions is established, an identification criterion of its grammatical expression patterns is proposed, a hierarchical evaluation system of its typicality is constructed, and a series of language rules of theoretical and practical significance is obtainedThe paper is divided into eight chapters:Chapter I briefly describes the nature of the ordinal categories as well as its expression forms, and introduces the previous studies of the ordinal categories,the significance and methods of the study, and sources and treatment of the corpus.Chapter II discusses the semantic constructions and the reference of the ordinal categories. It is generalized that the semantic construction basis is built on the comparision of two or more interrelated objects of the same set of things. The reference means the standards to form ordinal categories, having the features of being unitary and mixed, absolute and relative, including space, time, status and number identifier.Chapter III probes into the three major expression forms of the Chinese ordinal category. The idea of taking its expression forms as its classification criterion is proposed on the ground of the previous classification results, hence the ordinal expressions fall into 3 types:Lexical, grammatical and abbreviated. Lexical ordinal expressions include numeric expressions and non-numeric expressions, with the latter including the direct sequential type, the direct nonsequential type,the indirect sequential type, the indirect nonsequential type. Abbreviated ordinal expressions, in terms of abbreviation means, include the sequential abbreviated form and inverted sequential abbreviated form, and in terms of the number of the ordinals, include single-level and multi-level abbreviations.lt is found by the study of corpus statistics, qualitative analysis, historical review and brief comparison across languages that grammatical ordinal expressions are the most frequently used and therefore deserve more concern in the following chapters.Chapter IV investigates the classification of the grammatical ordinal expressions and its basic features. Its connotation and denotation is first of all tackled and standards to identify them according to its form and meaning are proposed; then the constrains of the grammatical ordinal expressions on the part of numerals, numeral strings and calligraphical forms of numbers are discussed; and then three types of the grammatical ordinal expressions are established, namely, specialized tag type, order type, weak marker type. Finally the basic features of the grammatical ordinal expressions are summed.Chapter V analyzes the cognitive semantic features of the grammatical ordinal expressions and the constrains of forming ordinal.A detailed and extended analysis from the perspective of semantic features and cognition is done by comparing cardinal and ordinal.Necessary semantic features of the grammatical ordinal expressions such as contrast, quantity and sequentiality, optional semantic features such as localization and nomination are worked out.And then a grading typicality sequence of the grammatical ordinal expressions is established according to its level of typicality, which is judged by a statistical analysis and an evaluation system, in which the evaluation indicators are induced from syntactic, semantic and cognitive perspectives of study.Finally, syntactic and semantic constrains of expressing the ordinal by grammatical ordinal expressions are analyzed.Chapter VI focuses on the study of the grammatical ordinal expressions.Five aspects of them are discussed:(A) an analysis of the ordinal phrases in conjunction and the semantic relationships between conjuncted items. (B)a description of the ordinal phrases having "di(第)+ numerals/numeral strings", (C) an exploration of the omission mechanisms of "di(第)"in the ordinal phrases with"di(第)’’.Constraining factors fall into two types, one being mandatory factors such as the semantic function and syntactic role of "di(第)’’, classes and change of ordinal references; the other being tendentious factors such as the classes of numerals,the value of numerals,the induction of ordinal register,the interference of the non-ordinal elements, and the drive of pragmatic motives.The mandatory factors are to limit the omitted scope of "di(第)’’and to examine the eight types of ordinal phrases which may potentially omit "di(第)’’,while the tendentious factors are not only to examine the eight types of ordinal phrases which may potentially omit "di(第)’’,but also to further investigate the exceptions after the mandatory factors’work to reveal the reasons beyond the syntactic and semantic factors.(D) a discussion of the omission mechanisms of quantifiers in the ordinal phrases. The restricting factors are types and semantic functions of quantifiers, discreteness and non-discreteness of NPs, bareness and non-bareness of NPs, variations of numerals, cognitive orientation, types and changes of ordinal references, differences of nominalization.The phenomenon of the omiitted quantifiers indicates that language form does not always fully match language meanings, and in the case of being semantic self-sufficiency, the compulsory rule can be boken. (E) a study of restricted conditions of the high-level mapping of"diyi(第一)”and the mapping similarity of "di’er(第二)”,followed by a comparision with the relevant constructions.Chapter VII studies the grammatical ordinal expressions by cross-dialect and cross-language comparison.The grammatical ordinal expressions in Chinese dialects are first tackled in terms of both strongly-marked forms and weakly-marked forms,with the former including specialized markers type,order type, and reduplication type.And then the grammatical ordinal expressions in Chinese minority languages are discussed also in terms of strongly-marked forms and weakly-marked forms,with the former including specialized markers type,order type, and reduplication type, internal inflection type, double markers type.Finally, the common features of the grammatical ordinal expressions between Chinese and Chinese minority languages are revealed.Chapter VIII concludes the paper. It summerizes the major contents and major ideas of the paper, followed in order by inspirations of the research, deficiencies of the research, and the follow-up study of the research. |
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