A Study On Expressions Of Degree Category In Modern Chinese

Degree category has many forms in modern Chinese in terms of vocabulary,grammar and pragmatics. There are state adjectives, words contained degree meaningand fixed phrases at the level of vocabulary. Then there are overlapping forms, degreeadverbials, degree complements，frame structures containing degree and syntictacalstructure at the level of grammar. At last, there is mood at the level of pragmatics.Among all these forms, degree adverbs and degree complements are the mostimportant ones.Degree adverbs are the most important expressions of degree category inmodern Chinese. Degree adverbs, as grammatical marks of degree category inChinese, have several features including vagueness in meaning, limitedness insemantic reference, greatness in functional adhesion and fixedness in distribution. Webelieve that degree adverbs differ from other adverbs in that the degree adverbs areusually put before adjectives (including some verbs and nouns), function as adverbialsand express degree category. According to this criterion, we select101degree adverbs.They are classified in terms of the ranks of degree, emotions and styles. Degreeadverbs modify qualitative adjectives, state adjectives, psychological verbs, commonverbs and their phrases and some nouns when they are used as adverbials. Degreeadverbs make a quantitative analysis of the adjectival. Degree adverbs have arelationship of two-way selection with the head words they modified. And thisselection is affected by ranks of degree, emotions and language styles. Sometimes theselection is restricted by the number of syllables. Generally speaking, degree adverbsof high rank have much more freedom when they are collocated with head words.This is closely related to grammaticalization of degree adverbs. For instance,“有点 儿” and “稍微” have conspicuous emotional inclination. The language styles of bothmatches should be the same. Degree adverbs are a closed word class and theirmembers are not equal. Some of them are typical and some are atypical. The functionsof these members are differentiated. Meanwhile, this system is open and brings innew members constantly. As for individuals of degree adverbs, they have differentfeatures in semantics, syntax distribution and sentence pattern selections.Degree complements are another way to express degree category in modernChinese. The most significant difference between degree complements and degreeadverbs is that the degree expressed by the former ones is basically limited to highdegree rank. Degree complements can be defined in a broad sense and a narrowsense. In the narrow sense, degree complements have distinctive features both informs and meanings. Firstly, they can not be used independently, nor can be used toanswer questions independently; secondly, they can not be negated; thirdly, they canhardly be extended; fourthly, they express high degree meanings; fifthly, the meaningsare blurred; sixthly, the meanings refer to the rheme. We have got44degreecomplements based on the determination of the scope of narrow degree complementsin modern Chinese exhaustively. Degree complements can be divided into severaltypes from the perspectives of ranks of degree, positive and pejorative connotationsand structures. Head words of rheme that can be combined with degree complementsparallel with head words which can be modified by degree adverbs, includingadjectives, verbs of psychology, common verbs and their phrases and some nouns.However, compared with degree adverbs, concrete degree complements are weakin their combination, and the two-way selection is more restricted between degreecomplements and rhemes. The major reason for this is many degree complements areweak in meaning blurring. Moreover, degree complements do not have total blurredlexical meaning, emotional meaning or stylistic meaning, which affect thecombination ability of degree complements. Many complements show conspicuousinclination when they are combined with rhemes. Degree complements, in a broadsense, overlap with result complements, state complements and number complementsdue to multiple semantic relations between rhemes and complements. In modern Chinese, result complement such as “高兴地跳起来”, state complement such as “胖得像充了气的皮球” and number complement such as “高几倍” can express thedegree of the rheme. General degree complements are different from narrow degreecomplements because the former ones are open and their number is unlimited. Degreecomplements are complementary to degree adverbs in expressing the degree category.Complements occupy the position of information focus to emphasize degree and theyhave strong subjectivity because they are on the surface of sentences.Degree adverbs, degree complements, state adjectives, adjective reduplication, andpattern structures are all used to express degree category in modern Chinese. Theyshow different styles from Indo-European languages.