The Contrast Research Of Chinese "Shenme" And Russian "Thdo"

Referring to previous researches on the Russian interrogative pronounce"th-do"and the Chinese counterpart"shen-me", the present study further investigates the interrogative use and the non-interrogative use of the Chinese word"shen-me"and the Russian word"th-do".The Chinese"shen-me"and the Russian word"th-do"hold a significant place in the two languages'interrogative pronoun system. They have a wide range of application and are used with a high frequency. Many studies have concentrated on this field and since 20th century, Chinese linguists have shift their attention to the study of non-interrogative use of"shen-me"and acquired considerable achievement. In Russia, there are a number of studies on the Russian word"th-do", but most of them take"th-do"as modal pronoun, intead of non-interrogative pronoun. So far, there are few contrastive studies about"shen-me"and"th-do", therefore, the present thesis attempts to make a comparison study on the use of the two words and give a comprehensive depiction of their interrogative use and non-interrogative use.Research range, methodology and aim of this study are introduced in the first chapter. In the following section, a research survey on"shen-me"and"th-do"is offered. The word"shen-me"and the word"th-do"occupy a very important place in Chinese and Russian interrogative pronoun system respectively.In the second chapter, a contrastive study on"shen-me"and"th-do"is conducted from grammatical, semantic and pragmatic aspects. As interrogative pronouns, many syntactic functions of these two words are similar. Both can function as subject, object and so on, but there exit some differences. For example,"th-do"can function as a predicate, while"shen-me"can not;"shen-me"can function as attributive, while use of"th-do"has special limitation and seldom functions as attributive.Based on the classification of the non-interrogative use of"shen-me"and"th-do", the following chapters, the third chapter and the fourth chapter, make a contrastive study on these two words. Results show that the usages of the two words have some similarities: the use of appoint-instruction, some-instruction and certain-instruction and differences also exit. As a appoint-instruction,"shen-me"had three kinds of formats customarily including"shen me…dou/ye","wu lun/bu guan…shen me…(dou)…"and"shen me…shen me…". In the formula"shen me…dou","shen-me"is just like"всё"in Russian. In the formula"shen me…ye","shen-me"is just like"ничто"in Russian. There are two realization forms in"'shen me…shen me…"formula in Russian: one is principal and subordinate complex sentence"то(всё)…+что…"or"что…+ +и…"; the other is brief frame"original principal clause + original subsidiary associate word + modal verb". In either case, being appoint-instruction,"shen-me"is just like"какой-то"in Russian when it is an attribute, and"shen-me"of"shen me NP"is just like"какой-то'"in Russian. In certain-instruction,"shen-me"is just like"какой-то"and"'кое-что"in Russian. Furthermore,"shen-me"can be used to enumerate several items, bu"tth-do"can't do that. Th"eshen-me"can be placed in front of the enumerative items or behind the enumerative items. As the Russian counterpart of"shen-me", there are two kinds of formats in Russian too, one format is to enumerate items, and then use a general term to summeriz, the other format is to use a general term before"например","как-то","аименно"and then enumerate the quits items."Th-do"is usually used together with"вот",and in this case,"th-do"have no interrogative meaning but indicate"this thing(object)"."Shen-me"does not have this kind of use.The non- instruction use (i.e. indicating any impersonal things) of"shen-me"and"th-do"were contrasted in the forth chapters. Results show that there are many kinds of non- instruction usages about"shen-me"and"th-do. For example, both of them can be used to alleviate or strengthen tone, to express negative manner, surprise or plaint. Besides,"th-do"can be used to express concessive tone and can also be used together with nouns to express emphasis on the noun. It can also occupy a leading place in a sentence. Furthermore,"th-do"can be a relative-connective word, but'shen-me'can't do that.