A Study On The Topicality Of Patient-Verb Clauses

This study focuses on the topicality of the Patient-Verb clauses in ancient Chinese(Old,Middle and Pre-Modern).From the perspective of information structure,we will explore the types of focus-structure of those clauses in the history.Besides,according to the relationship between different information structures and their functions,we also revisit the functions of those clauses.There are seven chapters in this thesis.Chapter 1 surveys various notions of Patient-Verb clause,and then gives an overall introduction of the studies of its topicality of this,construction.Chapter 2 focuses on the information structure theory,including its basic notions and research status.Lambrecht(1994)attracts most of our attention,which will be the main theoretical source of this study.Chapter 3 explores the principles and methods of determining the type of Focus Structure of Patient-Verb clause in ancient Chinese.As to theoretical basis,there are three aspects to emphasize:1)the relationship between syntactic form and discourse function;2)the basic type of logical judgement;3)typological evidence.Then,we put forward the detailed operating methods for different focus structure.Chapter 4 operates on real data about Patient-Verb clauses in ancient Chinese through all the operating methods argued last chapter.And we find that:1)Patient-Verb clauses show multiple focus structures.The preposing-patient can be a topic,or an argument focus or just an entity which is included in an event.2)Old Chinese has systematical manifestation of Argument-focus in Patient-Verb clauses and preposing-patients are less topical than those in other stages.When it comes to Middle and Pre-Modern Chinese,the systematical manifestation disappears,though there are still non-topic preposing-patients.3)In general,as an unmarked focus structure,Predicate-focus occupies the majority part of all Patient-Verb clauses.Chapter 5 revisits the functions of Patient-Verb clauses due to the fact that those constructions show multiple focus structures which relate to different discourse functions.According to the conclusions in chapter 4,and relying on the division between Realis and Irrealis,we argue that Patient-Verb clauses' functions fall into three groups which involve ten sub-classes.Chapter 6 discusses the construction's function of passiveness,especially passive reading.We find that Patient-Verb clauses are constructed by two kinds of verbs which divide these clauses into two types.Those two behave differently in passive reading and the property of[+state].Besides,we also argue that ancient Chinese shows theme-orientation through the performances of Patient-Verb clauses.Chapter 7 concludes the major viewpoints,the achievements and further questions about the study.