An Research On Symmetry And Asymmetry Of Antonymous Adverb "at Most-at Least"

The thesis, based on the former research achievements, by the statistic inspection of collected corpus data, will examine and analyze on the whole the phenomena of both symmetry and asymmetry of antonymous adverb "at most-at least" in Chinese in the aspects of semantic, syntactic, pragmatics and so forth, and describe carefully the asymmetric circumstances between the two and then illustrate the reasons of asymmetry from the perspective of semantics and cognition, etc.Chapter One is the introductory part, elaborating the reasons of choosing this title, research background, research methods and corpus resources.Chapter Two analyzes the symmetry of "at most" and "at least" presented in semantics from its grammatical meaning and subjective measure of antonymous adverb "at most-at least".Chapter Three mainly examines the symmetry and asymmetry of antonymous adverb "at most-at least" in syntactic from the distribution and composition of syntactic. In terms of syntactic distribution, "at most" and "at least" collocating with some words (volitive auxiliary, adverb, modal particle) as well as particular sentence pattern (sentences featured with "have") tend to show much difference, which owns the characteristic of asymmetry.Chapter Four analyzes the symmetry and asymmetry of antonymous adverb "at most-at least" in pragmatics from the selection of sentence pattern and style, t frequency of utilization and discourse structure. While "at most" and "at least" are frequently used in written declarative sentences, the frequency of using "at least" is far high than "at most", and the two do exist asymmetry phenomenon in discourse structure.Chapter Five analyzes the reasons for the asymmetry of antonymous adverb "at most-at least" from the perspectives of semantics and cognition and so on.Chapter Six investigates the developmental track of antonymous adverb "at most-at least" from diachronic perspective, thus helping us understand the asymmetry of the two in modern Chinese.Chapter Seven is the conclusion part, by concluding the writing content and basic views of the thesis, it points out the shortcomings.