A Cognitive Study On The Combination Of The Degree Adverb And The Negative Adverb In Mandarin Chinese

The phenomena of degree expressions and negative expressions are of greatimportance in Mandarin Chinese. However, the study on the combination of theDegree Adverb with the Negative Adverb has not been given enough attention yet. Inrecent years, the study on the degree adverb and the negative adverb has been theconcerns of many scholars, and more and more academic achievements appear. But asfor the combination, there are only some studies on individual words, instead ofsystematic ones. To the question above, here we do some systematic studies mainlyfrom the following aspects. Firstly,we describe the characteristics of the combinationfrom the syntactic and semantic. Secondly, we use cognitive linguistics and pragmatictheories to help explain the agent and formation mechanismof the combination.Thirdly, we analyze the pragmatic value and constraint of the combination.We alsorefer to the caused problem of lexicalization in this paper. And we try our best to havethis paper give a proper description of the combination.From the perspective of word order, the combination of the degree adverb withthe negative adverb is a very common phenomenon in grammar, however, the changeof word order in the combination has great influence on the pragmatic function. Forthe degree adverb itself in this phenomenon, although it is somehow similar with eachother on the semantic level and grammar function, because of so many kinds ofclassification in their system, the combination of some minorities and the negativeadverb is more worthy to be focused on in this study, meanwhile, our study alsoshows that the combination appears with two forms of structure which have hugedifferences in syntactic features, semantic features, pragmatic features. Secondly, onthe degree of the head word in the structure of the combination, the two forms abovehave different restrictions in the entry of the central words. All these grammarphenomena above deserve us to give reasonable description and explanation in detail.And then, to the symmetry of the combination, because of the degree adverb inChinese themselves and some other external factors, there may be some symmetricalunbalanced phenomena in the combination, for instance, some degree adverb andnegative adverb cannot have combination, some combination just appears with only one structure, or some may have two structures.Here in this paper, we collect a mount of corpora and facts to analyze and thensift out the useful parts. Based on these useful parts, we combine description withexplanation to describe from syntax, semantic meaning and pragmatics of thecombination and make a comparison and analysis of syntax and semantic meaning ofthe combination, which help us understand the expression function of different forms,namely “the degree adverb+the negative adverb+the head-word”and “the negativeadverb+the degree adverb+the head-word”, in the whole linguistics. Meanwhile, weuse ICM, subjectivity, lexicalization and pragmatics theories to expain the agent andmechanism of the combination.In Chapter One, we summarize the research achievements of predecessors andillustrate the research ideas and methods, together with corpus sources.In Chapeter Two, we make an overview of the degree adverb and the negativeadverb. The degree adverb implies the subjective modal when people expressopinions. And it decorates or measures the degree of character and action which isbeen expressed by adjective and verb. It means that we use the degree adverb whenwe want to express the degree. However, the negative adverb mainly representsnegation and evaluation. There are relatively less negative adverbs in MandarinChinese. What’s more, the combination of the negative adverb with other adverb willcause a lot of language order and lexicalization problems about pronunciation, syntax,semantics, pragmatics and rhythm. Furthermore, we make description and explanationof the asymmetry of the combination about “bu” and “mei(you)”.“bu” representssubjective negation, while “mei(you)” represents objective negation, so “bu” cancollocate the degree adverb freely while “mei” can be confined.In Chapter Three, we analyze the syntactic properties of the combination. Thecombination of the degree adverb with the negative adverb can lead to two structures,namely “the degree adverb+the negative adverb+the head-word” and “the negativeadverb+the degree adverb+the head-word”. The two structures vary a lot in threeaspects and we give a detail description of the difference in this paper. Firstly, as wehave discovered, the degree adverbs which only belong to the first structure are “bijiao, duo(duo me), fei chang, ge wai, geng(geng jia), guai, hao, he deng, ji(ji qi,ji du),shao(shao wei), ting, you qi, wan fen, you dian er, you yi xie, fen wai, te(te bie), po,ding, suan”, while the degree adverb which only belongs to the second structure is “guo yu”. And the degree adverbs which belong to the both are “ding, shi fen, tai, hen,te bie”, while the degree adverbs which belong to neither are “lue wei, bu da, guo”.Then we analyze the head-word of the combination and find that there are manyadjectives belonging to the structure. But some are limited because of differenthierarchicaldivisions of the two structures, the characters of the degree adverbs andthe properties of the adjectives. At last, we say something about the syntactic functionof the combination.In Chapter Four, we analyze the semantics of the combination of the degreeadverb with the negative adverb.In the structure layer of “the degree adverb+thenegative adverb+the head-word”, the negative adverb collocates with the head-wordfirstly and then it is decorated with the degree adverb. The structure can be indicatedas [the degree adverb+(the negative adverb+the head-word)]. While in the structure“the negative adverb+the degree adverb+the head-word”, some negative adverbsand degree adverbs have been the stolid words and so the structure can be indicated as[(the negative adverb+the degree adverb)+the head-word]. It means that the degreeadverb collocated with the negative adverb makes up the adverb phrase and thendecorates the head-word, which represents indirect negation and low-level subjectiveassessment of object and subject. And some have not been the stolid words and thestructure is indicated as [the negative adverb+(the degree adverb+thehead-word)].In the chapter, here we mainly discuss about the semantic of the centralwords in the combination, take the degree adverbs “hen”,“tai” for example, and wewill study it in three aspects, which are adjectives with size characters, verbs andmodal verbs. And we can find that there are only two most fundamental constraints:one is the quantitative character of the structure “the negative adverb+the degreeadverb+the head word”, which means once the head word is negated by the negativewords, the structure must have significant unicity and non-quantitative; the other isthe politeness maxims of cooperative principle, which means we never use aderogatory term to assess one object. As to the head word in this structure, we findthat only the positive adjective can be the head-word.In Chapter Five, we make a comparison and analysis of the combination from thepragmaticvalue and its problem of lexicalization. The two structures we mentionedabove have different pragmatic values, structure layers and head words, which lead tothe wide differences in the pragmatics. In this paper, we find that “the negative adverb +the degree adverb+the head-word” strengthen the degree of the characteristic andpsychology state. The structure may be relatively strong in tone and sometimescontains blame, discontent and aversion.While“the negative adverb+the degreeadverb+the head-word” modifies the head word by negating the degree adverb,which affirms the existence of the head-word and weaken the degree of the head-word.So it also embodies the euphemistic pragmatic value in the accent.Furthermore, this part analyses the lexicalization of the combination, taking “buda” for example. In Mandarin Chinese,“the degree adverb+the negative adverb” hasalready been lexicalized so that we only use “hao bu”. And “the negative adverb+thedegree adverb” mainly means “bu da, bu hen, bu tai, bu shen”. The two we mentionabove have the same generative mechanism and agent:“the negative adverb+thedegree adverb” is the formed framework. With the increasing usage frequency andsubjectivity of human expression, it lexicalizes and becomes a degree adverb ofexpressing subjective modal.In Chapter Six and Chapter Seven, we compare and analyse “hen” and “bu” with“bu”and “tai”to demonstrate the description and explanation above, from syntax,semantics and pragmatics.In Chpater Eight, we make the end of the whole paper.This paper combines description with explanation, collecting corpus adequately.Firstly, it analyses the combination of the degree adverb with the negative adverbfrom syntax, semantic meaning and pragmatics. Meanwhile, it combines cognitivelinguistics with pragmatics to help analyze the asymmetry, lexicalization andpragmatic value of the two structures, namely “the degree adverb+the negativeadverb+the head-word” and “the degree adverb+the negative adverb+thehead-word”.This may help the systematic study on the degree adverb and the negativeadverb a little in Mandarin Chinese.