A Study On Adverbs Of Degree And Their Structures In Modern Chinese

The study of adverbs of degree comes under the spotlight when studying modern Chinese and has yielded abundant achievements. But, there is still a room for further study, in that present results turn out to be with more combinations of structures of adverbs of degree and less rules and conditions of them, more static combinations and less dynamic rules of making sentences, more synchronic researches and less diachronic researches. The paper takes adverbs of degree in modern Chinese and their structures as objects of the study and is designed to study combination types of adverbs of degree’s structures, syntactic functions, rules of combination and rules of making sentences, and their diachronic evolvement in the history of modern Chinese.The paper consists of 7 chapters.Chapter 1:introduction. The chapter clarifies reasons and significance of the title, research purposes, theoretical basis, research methods and scopes and the sources of corpora used in. The study of the paper is limited in 37 adverbs of degree in Syllabus for Foreign Students Majoring in Chinese in Institutions for Higher Learning.Chapter 2:reviews of adverbs of degree and their structures. The chapter gives a short literature review of the existing researches on adverbs of degree and offers an overview of the classification of researches from perspectives of ontology and application, affirming the achievements and pointing out the weaknesses as well.Chapter 3:types and rules of structures of adverbs of degree. The chapter proposes a new classification of adverbs of degree by verifying forms and meanings. It divides adverbs of degree into covert comparisons and overt comparisons. It comprehensively describes 5 types of combination, also makes a detailed collocation sheet of adverbs of degree and then illustrates the relation between quantitative features and "FX" combinations, regarding "continuity, fuzziness and different levels" as the significant semantic basis for combinations. The chapter also points out the correctness of combinations of adverbs of degree is affected by the features of adverbs of degree and their modified parts as pronunciations, styles, discourses, comparisons, emotions and quantities.Chapter 4:syntactic functions of adverbs of degree and their structures. The chapter discusses syntactic functions both of adverbs of degree but also of their structures and reveals rules and conditions of some adverbs of degree and their structures acting as particular elements of sentences, such as rules of F or "FX" acting as subjects and those of attributes when "FX" is the subject, rules of using the signal words "de(的), di(地)" when "FX" acts as a particular element of sentences, features and rules in using overlapping structures like "V1 de(得)FA di(地)V2". By some diachronic researches, the present chapter also points out and explains the development and evolutive motivations of such structures as " verbs/adjectives+jile(极了), verbs/adjectives+deji(得极),verbs/adjectives +dehen(得很)and verbs/adjectives+henle(很了).Chapter 5:applicable researches of adverbs of degree and their structures. The chapter consists of two parts. The first part systematically discusses rules of using structures of adverbs of degree to make sentences and proposes five rules, that is, the adaptive rule of focus of sentence information, the adaptive and compensative rule of structures of sentence information, the adaptive rule of sentence subjectivity (including subjective emotions, quantities and tones), the adaptive rule of comparison objects and the compensative rule of pragmatics and cognition. By taking the adverb "hai hao(还好)”as the study case, the second part involves researches on discourse functions, semantic features and processes of grammaticalization, and finally,compared with "zuihao(最好)", it analyzes different types of errors made by foreign students in China and proposes corresponding teaching strategies.Chapter 6:the evolution of adverbs of degree in the history of modern Chinese. The chapter summarizes four evolutional types from early modern Chinese to contemporary Chinese: 1.The syntactic position of adverbs of degree has changed from front to back; 2. There are changes on collocation of structures of adverbs of degree; 3.Some auxiliary words are lost or redundant or replaced;4.The degree constituents changed from reiteration to irreteration.The chapter also reveals four evolutional rules of adverbs of degree and their structures, and they are: 1. Semantic directions of adverbs of degree get clear; 2. Semantic functions of adverbs of degree get coherent;3. The signal forms of adverbs of degree get apparent; 4.The focus of degree in the adverbs of degree sentences gets simplified.Chapter 7:conclusion. The chapter makes brief summary of views of the present author, explaining the area to be further improved and pointing out future studying directions.