The Semantic Ontology Of Chinese Modals

Since the linguistic turn of philosophy,the reflective comprehension and semantic exploration of linguistic expressions have become the primary task of the philosophy of language.Modality is the core topic of the philosophy of language,which represents a new advance in logic and is also closely related to linguistics.This dissertation focuses on the semantic description of representative Chinese modals and both the content essence and typical semantic features of Chinese modal semantic domains were firstly studies through analysis and criticism of related philosophical issues.On the premise of semantic classification,feature description of the representative Chinese modals were conducted based on the natural language examples selected from Sinica Corpus and literary works to clarify their source of conceptual content,attributive features,and the interaction of semantic components.Modals are the main linguistic means to convey modalities and the semantic description of Chinese modals has positive significance for Chinese modal logic,pragmatic regulation,and teaching Chinese as a foreign language.The current study on the semantic descriptions of Chinese modals is not yet systematic.The polysemous nature of modals and the dynamic evolution of their semantics make them important and often puzzling.The literature review shows that the existing studies mainly focus on the syntactic-semantic performance of an individual modal or modals in a certain semantic category.Little research has raised the study of modals to the pragmatic level to explore the interactive and complementary relationship between modal logic and language use.The semantic attributes of the subcategories of the Chinese modal system are inconsistent and therefore are loosely connected.Meanwhile,modality is also faced with many philosophical problems,such as the coherence between belief and justification,the implication between reason and cognitive judgment,moral coherence,Ross's puzzle,and the failure of presupposition.These philosophical problems can not reach a consensus merely through epistemological analysis.Post-Wittgenstein philosophy and the new descriptive thought emphasize the semantic description of linguistic expressions,and the semantic description of modals is a possible way to clarify the semantics of modal logic and further clarify these philosophical problems.Given this,this dissertation adopts the theory of truth-conditional semantics,the theory of possible worlds,and the theory of normative pragmatics to explore the semantic features,semantic components,logical semantic structures,and modal sources of the representative Chinese modals based on the language-use cases of "Academia Sinica" Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese.Based on the literature review of the previous research,this dissertation focuses on the semantic description of the representative Chinese modals through classification description,hierarchical description,and feature description.More specifically,it is primarily concerned with the following three issues:(i)According to the semantic characteristics,what semantic categories does the Chinese modal system include?And what are the representative modals in each semantic category?(ii)Based on the actual examples,what are the semantic features,semantic distribution,and semantic content of the representative modals?(iii)Facing the controversy between monosemy and polysemy,which model should be adopted to correctly construe the meaning of Chinese modals?Classification description found that a complete Chinese modal system includes five categories,which are alethic modality,epistemic modality,deontic modality,dynamic modality,and evaluative modality.In terms of classification description,in addition to epistemic modality and deontic modality,this dissertation demonstrates and identifies the semantic categorizations of alethic modality,dynamic modality,and evaluative modality from the dimensions of the nature and source of opinion or attitude.These three modal semantic categories,together with epistemic modality and deontic modality,constitute a rigorous semantic natural class.Among them,alethic modality,epistemic modality,and evaluative modality are the adjustment to the truth value of the basic proposition,which serves as a compliment.Deontic modality is both speaker-oriented and situation-oriented,and its semantic scope is at the inflectional layer.Dynamic modality is moderated by subject agentivity and its semantic scope is at the lexical layer.In the dimension of hierarchical description,modality reflects speakers'subjective attitudes or opinions about the proposition being true or false.The degree of certainty is not“yes”or“no”,but embodied in the continuum between 0 and1.Based on word frequency and the ternary framework of modals,this dissertation identified 18 representative Chinese modals,they are Biran??,Ouran??,Keneng₁??₁,Yiding??,Yinggai??,Keneng₂??₂,Bixu??,Yingdang??,Keyi??,Yao?,Neng?,Hui?,Gan?,Guoran??,Jingran??,Xingkui??,Pianpian??,Pei?.Based on natural language corpus,the feature description of representative Chinese modals was conducted from the dimensions of semantic distribution,semantic content,and semantic structure features.This dissertation mainly draws the following conclusions:Firstly,in the domain of alethic modality,the alethic modals modulate the truth value of the basic proposition,and they usually serve as the complement.The meaning of Biran is speaker-oriented and acts as a sentential adverb for it is an extra-proposition component.There are three semantic components in the semantic structure of Biran,they are,the prerequisite for the agent's judgment(marked as A),the deterministic judgment of the proposition's truth(marked as B),and the follow-up result that triggered by the proposition(marked as C).Among them,component B is the core element.Besides,the most common semantic structure is“A+B”(58.82%),that is,the basis or reason comes before the deterministic judgment is formed.The proportion of component C was not high(19.61%).The semantics of keneng₁ presupposes that the speaker does not know the truth value of the proposition at the time of speaking,and the semantic connotation of which is embodied as the strong conjunction of the proposition is true and false,that is,(?).Time variables are encoded in the semantics of ouran.In the context of present and past tense,the semantics of ouran is embodied as the conjunction of what happens and what logically might not happen.In the context of the future,the semantics of ouran is embodied as the combination of im/possible occurrence and accidental occurrence.Secondly,epistemic modality conveys the speaker's subjective views or attitudes toward the truth of a proposition.The two semantic components in the semantic structure of epistemic modals are the evidential component and the epistemic component,which are the conditions for the formation of speakers'epistemic judgment.Yiding emphasizes the evidential component.The evidential component in yiding is indirect evidence generated by reasoning,while the epistemic component refers to the subjective evaluation of the evidence.Yinggai also emphasizes the evidential component,which mostly appears in the perfect context and thus can not affect the truth value of the proposition.yinggai implies the speaker's expectation in the present and future tense contexts and implies the negation of the proposition's truth value in past tense context.Keneng₂emphasizes the epistemic component rather than the evidential component,which is used to express the speaker's conjecture and evaluation of the proposition's truth value.The degree of certainty of keneng₂is very low,which implies the speaker's negation of the proposition's truth.The semantics of keneng₂is future-oriented and seldom occurs in present or past tense contexts.Thirdly,deontic modality refers to the speaker's view or attitude towards the truth value of proposition according to deontic rules,which has the agentive attribute.As the core semantic component of deontic modals,the deontic rules can be divided into objective and subjective ones and their normative force is between obligation and authorization.The objective deontic source of bixu is more than the internal subjective deontic source,and its semantic color is relatively objective.Bixu has a significant normative function,which mainly appears in the context of unaccomplished-state(96%)and 72%of the use cases express normative or quasi-normative meaning to convey the speaker's desire or extended to express imperative.Yingdang was mainly used in normative sense and quasi-normative sense(75.13%),indicating a suggestion or advice tone.When the speaker is the agent,yingdang reflects the speaker's commitment to the truth of the proposition.The semantic structure of keyi involves both the speaker and the addressee,and 87.10%of the cases express the speaker's authoritative norm that has almost no compulsive force.However,12.90%of the cases express the authorization of the law or institution to an organization or individual,which are mandatory to some extent.Fourthly,dynamic modality concerns the subject participants'ability or willingness to make an event true.Dynamic modals are mainly used to convey the speaker's judgment of the possibility that the subject participant's property makes the event true.Yao has two usages in expressing dynamic modality,these are,willingness(i.e.want,hope)and volition(i.e.desire),which conveys positive force that the subject exerts on himself/herself.The core meaning of neng is“having the ability to do something”.Neng can be used to describe ability or volition and the ability sense is further divided into physiological ability or mental ability that has low stability and non-permanence.Besides,neng does not exist in a perfect tense context for it is not used with dynamic auxiliary verbs such as zhe,le,and guo.Hui is prominently used to express ability(98.11%)and the core meaning of which is to be able to do something.Hui can also be used to express physical property(1.89%),in which the ability is determined by the subject participants'objective condition.Gan is mainly used in a negative context(81.37%)and its semantic feature is non-assertive.That is the addressee or relevant agent experiences danger in the consciousness dimension which blocks the possibility that related actions or events are executed or realized.Fifthly,evaluative modality refers to the subjective evaluation of a given proposition based on the presupposition.The core semantic component of guoran is the agent's subjective anticipation of the proposition,indicating that the development of the event is consistent with the expectation and thus expresses an expected tone.There are five types of category relationships in guoran,these are,explanatory relation(71.05%),causal relation(17.54%),inheritance relation(8.77%),conditional relation(1.75%),and adversative relation(0.88%).The semantic features of guoran are[+presupposition],[+result],and[+anticipation].The core semantic component of jingran is anti-expectation,which expresses the semantic incompatibility between the premise clause and the result clause(66.32%)or the contrast between the states of affairs in the same event(33.68%).The semantic features of jingran include[-common sense],and[+result].The semantic structure of xingkui includes the semantic components of a basic clause,premise clause,and result clause.Among them,82.05%of the basic clauses indicate reasons,and 17.95%of which were used to indicate conditions.In terms of semantic structure,the structure that basic clauses indicate reasons or conditions,the premise clauses are unfavorable,and the result clauses are positive accounts for the largest proportion(84.62%).But there are also cases where the premise clause is advantageous or undecidable,and the result clause is disadvantageous.Through the analysis of the semantic relationship between the adjacent propositions,we found that the core semantic component of pianpian is the sense of diverging(77.05%).Besides,pianpian can also express the additive(21.86%)or restricted relationship(1.09%)between propositions.In expressing diverging sense,57.39%of the cases are those that diverging with one's wishes and conveying the tone of regret;while 42.61%are those that conforming to one's expectation and expressing the tone of surprise.Pei is followed by the“V+N”structure and can be used to express fuzziness,quasi-normative,or speculative meaning according to the evaluation criteria of objectivity and clarity.Also,word collocation shows that the semantic color of pei is neutral and positive.This dissertation takes both systematicity and completeness into consideration when studying the semantic description of Chinese modals.The semantics of Chinese modals were described from the three dimensions of category,hierarchy,and feature,which have certain theoretical,practical,and methodological significance.Practically,this dissertation deepens the semantic comprehension of Chinese modals,which may provide useful enlightenment for teaching Chinese as a foreign language,speech communication,and Chinese modal logic.Theoretically,through the pragmatic/semantic interface exploration of Chinese modals,this dissertation demonstrates the effect of multi-dimensional description in revealing the weak normalization in lexical semantics,thus solidifying the theoretical foundation of New Descriptivism.Methodologically,the fine-grained description of word meaning through multiple layers is an effective way to solve the problems in the scope of philosophy of language.However,the semantic evolution and complex context of Chinese modals imply that this is a long-term and arduous task,which requires scholars to work together to promote Chinese modal logic more systematic and comprehensive.