A Study Of The Category Of Chinese Equative Construction

Comparisons are the common thinking and cognitive abilities of human beings.The category of comparative semantics embodied in human languages also has a wide range of universality.The lexical and syntactic forms of expressing comparative semantics in each language are more diverse.The above phenomena make the category of comparative semantics always be a hot topic in language research.At present,however,the academic circles pay much more attention to the inequal comparative sentences than the equative sentences.In order to achieve the sufficient observation,description and explanation of equative categories,this research try to develop a concept system of the equative category from the macro level,to explore the construction type,coding type,and word order type of the equative structure in Chinese and surrounding Minor languages in China from the structure level,to explain the source and derivative of the equative concept and the multi-function of the equative markers in Chinese and surrounding Minor languages in China from the semantic cognition level.In addition to the conclusion,there are seven chapters:The first chapter introduces the research ideas and methods of this paper,and sort out the study of Chinese comparative sentences.Previous studies on comparative sentences in Chinese mainly focused on the following aspects:discussing the definition of comparative category and identifying the research objects of comparative category;describing the form of comparative sentences by using structuralist theory;tracing back the emergence time and formation process of comparative markers and comparative sentences in Chinese;taking the word order of comparative sentences as an important reference for basic word order investigation.The linguistic typology of comparative sentences and the difficulty of second language acquisition of different comparative sentences in Chinese are measured to provide criteria for the selection and ranking of grammatical items in comparative sentences.Generally speaking,the attention paid to the inequal comparative sentence is much higher than that of the equative sentence,and there are still many problems about the equative sentence that are difficult to solve.Chapter 2 follows the idea of grammatical meaning as the starting point defines the semantic concept of comparative category,and extracts five semantic elements of comparative event:comparative target,comparative standard,comparative point,comparative result and comparative event process.It involves the syntactic problems of comparative category,including the symmetry of comparative target and standard,the syntactic characteristics of standard markers,the syntactic characteristics and symmetry of comparative results and the grammatical function of comparative sentences.Chapter 3 investigates the types of equative sentence structure in modern Chinese.The comparison result of the comparative sentence is the most significant symbol of the whole construction pattern.Therefore,this chapter divides the modem Chinese equative construction pattern into three corresponding categories:the pattern of adjectives comparison result marker,the pattern of pronoun comparison result marker and the pattern of auxiliary comparison result marker.Then,this chapter makes statistics on the occurrence frequency of all kinds of construction patterns in the actual corpus.Generally speaking,the pattern of adjectives result markers are the most common equative construction pattern in the actual corpus,and the cooccurrence frequency of the "He" and "Xiang"standard markers is the highest.The ability of the reference pronouns to serve as the result markers of the comparative sentences is "Zheyang>Nayang?Name>Zheme".The sequence of the auxiliary word result marks "Shide" and the iconicity type standard marker have the highest cooccurrence frequency;the auxiliary word result "Shide" reflects the strongest fixed collocation feature and has the highest degree of grammaticalization.Chapter 4 discusses the coding types of the Chinese equative sentences,which are based on the concepts of heading-marking and dependent-marking in Nichols(1986),and the six types of equative sentence types proposed by Haspelmath(2017).We think that the modern Chinese mainly uses the equative structure of the two coding types:"standard mark+result marker","equivalent/reach verb as secondary predicate type",and uses the double mark coding method of heading-marking and dependent-marking;ancient Chinese has also used a large number of "only standard marker" and"only result marker" equative type structure,but in general,from the ancient Han Dynasty,Chinese tends to use the coding method of dependent-marking to construct the equative structure.In addition,this chapter also extracts three coding features that exist in Chinese and neighboring national languages:first,there are mixing and differentiation between equative and inequal marker at diachronic and synchronic levels;second,the equative structure has the characteristics of two types of single marker and double marker;third,comparative markers can be combined with three semantic functions of equation,similarity and analogy.The above typological features are also widely found in the equative construction of other languages in the world.Chapter 5 discusses the word order types of the second type of Chinese parlance structure,which are based on Greenberg(1963)and Dry(1992),and Haspelmath(2017)investigation and classification of 119 equative structures in the world.This chapter collects the corpus of three kinds of equative structures in the Minor languages in China,and finds that the two word orders proposed by Haspelmath(2017)have great differences in predictability of different types of equative structures,which are manifested in the following aspects:the predictability of the equative structure with a introductive standard marker and the equative structure with a reaching standard marker in Minor languages in China is very weak.While the predictability of word order of equative structure with a iconicity standard marker is very strong.Our explanation is that the equative structure of Minor languages in China with a high degree of matching with universal word order rules is more likely to come from the evolution of grammar system itself,while the equative structure with a low degree of matching with universal word order rules is more likely to be influenced by the strong special word order of Chinese equative structure.The particularity of word order of Chinese equative and inequal structures is a manifestation of the particularity of word order of Chinese prepositional structures.There are two impacts on the equative structure of Chinese preposition structure since the Wei and Jin Dynasties:first,the advance of the reference component accelerates the development of the standard marker from the verb which has the meaning of similarity to the preposition;second,the advance of the reference component breaks the restriction of the original sentence pattern on the grammatical component.Chapter 6 discusses the diachronic evolution types of Chinese equative categories from the perspective of macro-cognitive semantics.We believe that the origin and derivation direction of Chinese equative categories and similar categories are of general significance in typology.This chapter finds that there is a diachronic evolutionary relationship between the category of comparation in world language and the concepts of space,possession and manner.The above three sources all follow the grammaticalization rules from concrete concepts to abstract concepts.It is concretely summarized as follows:the comparative category originating from the concept of space,which is used by most languages in the world,including the use of some static positional words or dynamic trend verbs as comparative markers;the comparative category originating from the concept of possession,which is a special type of diachronic semantic evolution of Chinese;the comparative category originating from the concept of manner,which is mainly related to Roman and Latin,always can be found in the Indo-European languages.The derivation of equative and similar concepts can also reflect the universal evolution of world languages.The evolutionary goals of equative markers mainly include:similar and analogy markers,inferential adverbs,topic markers,example markers and clause markers.Chinese "Xiang" can be said to be an equative marker with high degree of grammaticalization.In addition,the word like "Xiang",which has the function of equative marker with similar derivative directions,can also be found in many African languagesChapter 7 examines the multi-functional semantic cognitive model of the standard markers commonly used in Chinese and the surrounding Minor languages in China from a micro-cognitive perspective.In this chapter,the basic research methods of semantic map are applied to the research field of Chinese comparative category.The conceptual maps and semantic maps of introductive equative standard markers,iconic equative standard markers and "You" reaching equative reference markers are drawn respectively.On the basis of these,we find that the multi-functional semantic model of Chinese equative standard markers has certain characteristics in the world language.As a result,it has the reference value in the study of linguistic typology.In the past,it was generally believed that the standard markers of "He" have semantic adjacency with adjoining functions,and there is no direct implication relationship with juxtaposition functions.But we found that in some minority languages,the analogical markers of "He" only have the function of juxtaposition conjunctions.On this basis,we re-adjusted the conceptual maps between the three functions of "He",juxtaposition and adjoining functions.The function of the equative markers is a subordinate concept of juxtaposition and adjoint function.In addition,some patterns of semantic concurrency with Chinese characteristics can also be found in national languages.This chapter suggests that the reasons for this high similarity may not be driven by internal factors of language,but more likely by regional diffusion caused by contacts between languages in East Asia.