A Study On The Relationship Between Referential Form And Referential Function

Based on the theoretical of functional linguistics,this dissertation uses pragmatics and cognitive linguistics to study the referential function of the form of “bare noun” and“a+quantifier+noun”.The focus is on the relationship between the form and function of reference.Our main points are as follows:There is no one-to-one relationship between the referential form and referential function.“bare noun” and “a+quantifier+noun”can freely express different referential property,but they also have their own typical referential property.Under different referential types,both forms can be used independently or interchangeably.There are four types of referential forms:referring expression and non-referring expression,forgrounding expression and backgrounding expression,generic and non-generic,definite and indefinite.In addition,there are two types,non-referential is the most typical type of non-referring expression,and it is caused by syntactic structure.Previous translations of specific and non-specific terms tend to be misleading,so the current term is chosen.specific and non-specific are not independent Reference type,they are two interpretations of indefinite nouns.We choose the generic reference,the definite reference and the concurrent reference to investigate the situation respectively.In the arrangement of chapters,generic reference,the definite reference and the concurrent reference are selected to be investigated respectively.In addition,we also explain the use of “bare noun” and “a+quantifier+noun” in the remaining referential types(non-referring expression、backgrounding expression).The reason why choose generic reference,the definite reference and the concurrent reference as the core content is that “bare noun” and “a+quantifier+noun” are flexible and have different performance in expressing the nature of these three references.And relatively speaking.The remaining groups of referential types have special attribute and many restrictive factors.Although they are discourse referential concepts,they involve issues such as the speaker’s intention and discourse focus,they are either no free to use“a+quantifier+noun” when express backgrounding expression,unless a type of the declarative clause of “a+quantifier+noun”,it is the speaker’s use of metaphor to express the subjective emphasis of modality.or in that grammatical constraints,there is no difference between the two forms of use when express non-specific,so unlike other types of reference,we pay more attention to its attribute characteristics,rather than the two forms of comparison.Therefore,we only select class reference,definite reference and double reference as the main research tasks,and only select typical phenomena to explain the remaining groups of reference types.On the nature of generic,“a+quantifier+noun” generics has the tendency of descriptive and individual eventuality,and often appears with the subjective evaluation words.it focuses on the expression of “subjective reasoning” and “commentary”,so speakers often cite it to support their own point of view.While bare noun generics have a strong tendency of objectivity,which expresses a law of permanence or repetition.It is difficult to appear in subjective evaluation sentences unless it is presented as a general concept.In expressing the nature of definites,we distinguish between non-conventional form and non-conventional context,and explain the type and importance of absolute context,in which grammatical form and syntactic constraints are no longer important,this explains why the referential nature of nominal elements can not be unified in some sentence patterns.when undesignated interpretation occurs in certain sentence,it is also because the lack of absolute context constraints.Secondly,the contextual conditions that restrict “a+quantifier+noun” must have the same restrictive effect on bare nouns,however,the syntactic conditions that limit the use of bare nouns do not necessarily have the same effect on “a+quantifier+noun”,which is the biggest difference between the two forms in the nature of definites.Besides,the definite sentence that tend to use the form of " a+quantifier+noun " are more related to the utterance state than to the hearer information state.However,the two forms can be used interchangeably and are more related to the hearer’s information state than to the discourse state.Finally,we analyze a special referential phenomenon,that is “double reference”.double reference sentence has textuality.it often appears in the narrative sentence,in which there is a specific narrative object,through this event leads to the interpretation of this kind of referential object,and the content of the referential sentence is often related to the events of the main structure.The introduction of the entity into the discourse in advance is an important condition for the noun to become the interpretation of the designation,but it is not an absolute condition,then the speaker has the possibility to highlight the meaning of the Noun,at which point the noun can be interpreted concurrently.Therefore,the flexibility of position,the absolute condition of weakening the definite sentence and the quasi-reference sentence,and the semantic connection or transition between the former and the latter provide the possibility for the development of the double reference sentence into textual cohesive elements.The double reference sentence constitutes two typical semantic patterns in discourse,which have the function of transforming or advancing the topic in discourse construction,it can also express the speaker’s subjective attitude.Compared with the form of “a+quantifier+noun”.bare noun are an atypical grammatical form of the double reference sentence.they form a ssemantic hierarchy of < a+quantifier+noun,bare noun>,that is to say,the former can be used in a text which can also use bare noun to express double reference,but the opposite is unavailable.This dissertation includes the following three main parts: First,it summarizes the researches on the nature of reference in foreign and domestic linguistic circles,and defines several important types of reference in Chinese and their nature;Second,investigates and analyzes the referential functions and differences of the two grammatical forms;Finally,summarize the full text and point out which still need improving.Specifically,the framework of dissertation can be divided into the following sections:Chapter One is The introduction,the content is tointroduce the research object and significance,research status and different understanding,theoretical backgrounding and research methods,research thought and research corpus.Chapter Two is the first part of the main elements.First of all,On the basis of the analysis of the classification of the reference of nominal elements by relevant scholars,this paper defines the concept of reference of nominal elements and sorts out the relationship between the types of reference,at last,a reference system which can support the research of this paper is constructed by re-judging the cross-referential nature of many concepts.The following is the second part of the main elements from Chapter Three to Chapter Five.Which examine the substantial referential functions of bare noun and“a+quantifier+noun” in modern chinese.Under the relevant reference types,different grammatical forms are different in the degree of typicality and syntactic restriction.in some cases,these grammatical forms can be interchangeable,while in other cases they can only be used alone.we mainly discuss the syntactic and semantic aspects and the textual pragmatic functions of bare noun and “a+quantifier+noun” in the case of denotative,generic and double reference.Chapter Six is the third part of the subject.First of all,we judge the referential nature of the judgmental “Shi sentence”,the negative scope and the nominal element in the verb-object relation,analysis the contrast between two grammatical forms.Finally,we need to discuss special kind of “a+quantifier+noun”phenomenon,which shows that“a+quantifier+noun” is declarative and acts as a clause independently.Chapter Seven is the conclusion of this dissertation.We summarize the main conclusions,and point out the shortcomings and further aspects that need to be studied.