The Criteria For The Independent Existence Of The Adjectival Category

This thesis is devoted to the establishment of a criteria for the verification of the independent existence of the adjectival category in Chinese. In this thesis, the author argues against some foreign linguists who state that the adjectival category exists in Chinese as a sub-category of verb, or even that the adjectival category doesn't exist in Chinese at all. In their opinion, only verb can stand in the position of predicate. However, in Chinese, an adjective can also take up the position of predicate. They hold this as the most important evidence in support of their idea. The author believes that in Chinese a covert auxiliary verb absorbs all the overt grammatical features of the verb which is in the predicate position. Therefore, the verb disappears from the surface structure of a sentence. Then, it seems that an adjective can take up the predicate position. Having testified that an adjective doesn't occupy the predicate position, the author of this thesis verified the independent existence of adjective in Chinese. The thesis reviews the criteria provided by Chinese linguists for the classification of the adjectival category. Before the establishment of the criteria, the author gives a chapter to illustrate the difference between noun, verb, adverb, and adjective from the aspects of syntactic distribution and the semantic content it is in and denotes. It is because the criteria I establish are to check a certain word's class from these two aspects. I describe several syntactic distributions of adjective and all the semantic content denoted by it. Then, I stipulate that if a word can fit in with the syntactic distribution and denote thesemantic content I have described before at the same time, the word must be inthe adjectival category.