A Study Of Selection Structures In Modern Chinese

On the foundation of the previous relevant researches,together with the theories of structural grammar,cognitive linguistics,systematic functional grammar,subjectivity,conversational structural analysis,foreground-background analysis,and word frequency effect,this dissertation studies the Chinese selection structure.Based on the detailed investigation and analysis of the selection structure of modern Chinese,the conclusion has arrived at the hierarchical system of the structure.This dissertation analyses the word-order constraints of the selection structure from multi-dimensional aspects like the concept,structure,semantics and pragmatics respectively and also discusses the common and individual constraints within.The foreground-background configuration of the selection structure has been discussed and on the basis of the transitivity theory,the syntactic,semantic and discourse representations of foreground-background configuration in deterministic selection structure have been analyzed.As to the echoic usage of Meta language,a great deal of effort has been put on the study of the rhetorical structure of positive-negative selection "be...or..." in conversational discourse.The dissertation focuses on the classification,the specific form of X,and the syntactic,semantic and functional characteristics of the structure of positive-negative selection in Meta echo.The study finds that in modern Chinese,there are mainly three types of selective Meta markers:1.or-the marker of changing language(alternative and selection);2.rather than-the marker of comparing language(comparison and selection);3."be...or..."-the marker of choosing language(inquiry and selection).This dissertation has given detailed study and analysis to the forms and functions of these three different kinds of Meta markers.The originality of this research lies in the introduction of the analysis of foreground-background configuration to the study of selection structure in modernChinese,and explores the configuration in Chinese deterministic selection structure with the help of theories like transitivity.Some supplements have been made through the study of transitivity(for example,the imperative sentence tends to have high-level transitivity which shows that it is easy to realize in the future).Exploratory research has been carried our while studying the marker-"be...or"(inquiry and selection).In the analysis of the marking function of the Meta language,the mathematical concept"substitution" has been used.