A Study On The Word Order Of Prepositional Phrase In Contemporary Chinese

In the framework of ancient Chinese, dialects and Mandarin, this thesis is intended to solve the word-order problem with prepositional phrases in Contemporary Chinese from three perspectives as follows:First, in diachronic perspective, we made a distinctive explanation different from others' opinion over the word-order shift of prepositional phrases from the end of verbs to the front. In our opinion, it is based upon different understanding about the concept of great quantity why earlier researchers held the belief that the word order of prepositional phrases went through the process of shift from the end of verbs to the front. With the use frequency and quantity of the preposition "yu(T)" declining, many researchers have reached a consensus on "great quantity". Subsequently, researchers have come to believe that the shift of the prepositional phrases from the end of verbs to the front was completed during the Yuan and Ming dynasties.Secondly, in synchronic perspective, we carried out an exploration on the word order of prepositional phrases in Contemporary Chinese. We made an attempt to interpret from a new standpoint the reasons why prepositional phrases in Contemporary Chinese can place themselves at different positions syntactically through employing new theories and approaches, such as systematic-functional grammar, theme and focus theories, cognitive grammar and prosodic syntax of Chinese.Finally, in the perspective of dialects, we made a static description about the word order of prepositional phrases of different kinds from various dialects, on the basis of which we conducted a synchronic and horizontal comparison, investigating whether there is any difference of word order between prepositional phrases made up of the same prepositions from different dialects and probing into the cause of such differences.