The Contrast Research On Ever And Already

The time adverbs ever and already both can be used to express the meaning of past, but differences exist in their specific features, syntactic meanings and pragmatic aspects. These differences are the objects of this paper, and it aims to use theories, such as three planes, to discuss the differences between ever and already.There is no dispute on that ever and already belongs to time adverbs, but it is not definite that they belong to which specific classes. We classify these two words into the kind of time adverbs with the meaning of"Already". One of them has the meaning of fixed while the other has the meaning of unfixed. "Ever" and the time table system is determined and only can be used to mean past. "Already" and the table when the system is uncertain, can be used in past, present and future sentences according to the context or the language tips with the meaning of time. The grammatical meaning of ever can be used to express the related situation or affairs of the sentences have happened, been the fact or had kind of experiences before certain period. The grammatical meaning of already means that something has been done,and it emphasizes the related affairs or situations of the sentences have happened or have been the fact on a certain time or before the time of their speech.In the syntactic meaning contrast, auxiliaries such as"着","了","过"are the important ways to mean such meaning of time in Chinese. They indicate the situation of the progress of this act, such as the past experiences, present perfect tense or in progress. Ever and already co-occur with such auxiliaries as"着","了","过". Ever could only co-occur with"了1"which has the meaning of the past, already could co-occur with"了1","了2"ever co-occur with"过2"to express the meaning of having had certain kind of experiences,"过1"co-occur with already to express the meaning of the done of past. Ever co-occur with"着"can be used to indicate "Ever" and "着" represents the continued co-occurrence of events or acts with a certain time in the last end, "Already" and "着" co-occurrence, event or act that did not stop the continuing nor the end. As Modifiers, "ever" can not be directly modified quantifier; "has been" modified quantifiers can also be modified Verb phrase. Can modify a verb in the modified form continued when the verb and non-continuous verb, in the specific differences in usage, "has" to modify certain terms, and the "have" can not. Complement can be modified in some phrases, but "has" more freedom. In addition to as adverbials in the sentence, "Ever" also located in the sentence, modify the sentence, when used with other adverbs, as their grammatical meaning of the different, the linked order is also show different characteristics.In the aspects of pragmatics, the topics of ever and already usually appear in the beginning of a sentence. When already modifies quantity phrases, the stress of the sentence is same, but the focus of the sentence is different and their semantic meanings are also different. Ever mainly means statement and prescription, and it reflects the object facts. When it is used to mean the feature of object, it pays attention to the objectivity and factuality rather than giving subjective evaluations. Ever puts emphasizes a static statement. Already mainly means the feature of limitation, and it restrict the predicate following it. In this situation, it mainly means a large number of subjectively, such as plenty of, high level, long distance and so on. There is a kind of subjective feelings in it.