Research About The Imperative Category And Its Means Of Expression In Modern Chinese

The project of "Research on Contemporary Chinese Imperative Category and Its Expression Method" is a combination of theory and application.Guided by cognitive linguistics,category theory and semantic syntactic theory,this dissertation combines elements of pronunciation,vocabulary,syntax,pragmatics and context to analyze classic sentences from Balanced Contemporary Chinese Corpus of State Language Commission,"Chinese Verb Usage Dictionary"(Meng Zong,etc.1999),"Chinese Adjective Usage Dictionary"(Zheng Huairou,etc.2003),"Contemporary Chinese Tone Component Usage Dictionary”(Qi Huyang,2011),"Chinese Verb-Result Complement Collocation Dictionary"(Wang Yannong,1987)as well as some academic works and it totally collects more than 10,000 pieces of linguistic corpus.In the light of methods of data statistics,comparative study,integrating point with face,highlighting the language facts analysis and deepening theoretical research,this dissertation focuses on studying theoretical connotation of imperative category and expression methods of contemporary Chinese imperative category.Including the introduction and conclusion,the dissertation consists of seven sections,in which the body is made up of five chapters.Details are as follows:The Introduction mainly presents the selected topic reasons,the research objectives,the existing research,the theoretical background,the research content and the research methods,and it also explains the source of the corpus.Chapter one theoretically and systematically explains and describes imperative category.On the basis of psychology and cognitive linguistics,this chapter analyzes imperative behavior,imperative semantics and imperative category.Firstly,the dissertation points out that,with the aid of certain methods,imperative desire in human brain results imperative behavior.By virtue of linguistic means,imperative behavior generates imperative verbal behavior which consists of its content and form.The content of imperative verbal behavior is imperative semantics.Imperative category is an abstract summary on imperative semantics.In a broad sense,imperative category is an abstract summary of imperative behavior,which can be called imperative behavior category;in a narrow sense,imperative category is an abstract summary of imperative semantics,which can be called imperative semantics category.The latter is the main content of the study.Secondly,on the premise of imperative category,this dissertation analyzes that command-meaning imperative behavior is a part of prototype of imperative category.Command-meaning imperative behavior can request imperative object to do something to the maximum degree,so obviously,command-meaning imperative behavior becomes the strongest imperative and "semantic prototype" of imperative category.Finally,in the light of the analysis of imperative behavior,this dissertation summarizes such four features of imperative category as subjectivity,objective nature,prescriptive nature and presupposition.It also concludes that imperative subject,imperative object and imperative content constitute imperative category.Imperative subject is the core of imperative category and the other two factors that focus on imperative subject are related to each other and influence each other.Chapter two analyzes imperative category and its subcategory in contemporary Chinese.This chapter further deepens the understanding of imperative category of contemporary Chinese on the basis of imperative category theoretical research.This dissertation mainly analyzes illocutionary force of contemporary Chinese imperative category,classification criterion of contemporary Chinese imperative subcategory and contemporary Chinese imperative subcategory.The complicated form of contemporary Chinese expression imperative category leads to "imperative illocutionary force" existing different strength levels which become classification criterion of contemporary Chinese imperative subcategory.From psychological aspect,this dissertation further analyzes constraints that influence the choice of“imperative illocutionary force".These constraints originate from the contrast of social factors and psychological factors between two speakers.According to this contrast,we can estimate the achievement level of presupposed imperative result,which can help us to choose different language forms to express imperative semantics.In fact,“imperative illocutionary force" is a kind of force that speaker imposes on listener through his verbal behavior.Then,by reference to Talmy's "Strength-Dynamic Model",this dissertation builds "Illocutionary Force-Dynamic Model" of imperative category.This dissertation clarifies all kinds of contrastive situations between two speakers and uses model graphical representation to summarize four levels of imperative illocutionary force.In the light of these four levels,contemporary Chinese imperative category is divided into such four subcategories as mandatory imperative,suggestive imperative,consulting imperative and begged imperative.Chapter three analyzes expression approaches of contemporary Chinese imperative category.There are many different kinds of methods and forms of contemporary Chinese to express imperative category.To comprehensively and objectively clarify a variety of expression forms,this dissertation,based on a large number of authentic corpuses,uses computational linguistics and hierarchy system of pronunciation,vocabulary,syntax and discourse markers to exhaustively research all kinds of forms and methods that can express imperative semantics,and concludes around twenty kinds of expression forms including imperative tone and accent of phonetic level,the negative imperative marker words and emphatic imperative marker words of lexical level,ten types of typical imperative sentence patterns of syntactic level and three kinds of discourse markers of discourse marker level.The summary on contemporary Chinese imperative category expression approaches in this dissertation is beneficial in building a systematic imperative expression system which can further deepen the understanding of imperative expression rule.Chapter four analyzes context constraints of contemporary Chinese imperative category.Any use of language is related to contexts.This chapter mainly analyzes constraints of context on expression and understanding of imperative semantics and explanation function.Traditional context factors that include all kinds of objective external situations,subjective interpersonal relationship and temporary psychological factors constrain imperative semantic expression.Cognitive context plays a role of explanation in the understanding of imperative semantics.From the mentality of two speakers,cognitive context constructs cognitive psychological community to promote the understanding of listener on implicit imperative semantics.Chapter five mainly analyzes special issues of contemporary Chinese imperative category,including two parts:The first part analyzes imperative modal particle of contemporary Chinese sentence ending.This part mainly analyzes semantic features and expression functions of such five common modal particles as "Ah","Ba","Bei","Le" and "Ma".These modal particles form a selected network of semantic expression strength for command receivers,which can meet imperative subject's emotional needs of expressing imperative command.Through analyzing modal particles,this dissertation summarizes such three interpersonal relationship rules of modal particles as altruistic rule,euphemistic rule and consistent rule.The second part analyzes the emergence and ellipsis of contemporary Chinese imperative subject.Subject can be divided into four types according to its emergence and ellipsis,including compulsory emergence subject,normal emergence subject,normal ellipsis subject and compulsory ellipsis subject.It is common for speaker to omit subject while giving imperative command.This is closely related to cognitive psychological process of speaker while performing imperative behavior,psychological accessibility of imperative object and contextual function.The conclusion summarizes main content and ponts of this dissertation and points out existing shortages and issues which can be further researched in the future.