The Cognitive Study Of The Predicate-Complement Of Degree Structure In Contemporary Chinese

The Predicate-Complement of Degree Structure (Henceforth PCDS) is used frequently in the contemporary Chinese, especially in the spoken Chinese (Putonghua in Chinese) . In the history of Chinese language study, the complement of degree in the PCDS attracts great attention of many researchers; hence there is already large number of achievements in this field. However, this study describes the PCDS in Chinese on the aspects of the syntax, the semantics and the pragmatics by employ the theory of Cognitive Linguistics.First of all, this dissertation defines the scope of the object of this study. As for how many PCDS in the contemporary Chinese, several different answers were given in the previous study. All of these views are referenced, as well as the fact of the Chinese language, to make sure the objectivity of this study. Therefore, all of the PCDS in Chinese which comprise forty-six complements of degree are studied in this dissertation. This study starts with the structure of the PCDS, including the complements of degree in PCDS and predicates (most adjective and part of verb.) modified by the complements of degree. Not all of the verb and adjective can be followed by the complement of degree, which can be explained by the theory of "bounded" and "boundless" in this study. Besides the structure of the PCDS, the study also emphasizes the semantics of the PCDS, which express the people's cognition on the category of quantity. According to the point view of the Cognitive Linguistics, people use the language to express all kinds of categories of semantics reflecting their cognition and feeling of the world. Although the researchers of the traditional Chinese language believe that all of the complements of degree can only express the greatly high degree, we found different complements means different degrees according to the language data researched in this study. Strictly speaking, there is no concept of "Jí"(equals to the degree in English) in the Chinese language, but the wider concept "JíCì"(degree and order) is used here to describe the semantic particularity of the complements of degree. Meanwhile, the quantity and degree including the subjective feeling, called Subjective Quantity, expressed by the PCDS is another emphasis in this part. The previous study indicates that the speakers always use the complements of degree to show their strong feeling and obvious standpoint. That is because, at first, some of the PCDS are often used specially as the derogatory term or the commendatory term. In addition, from the perspective of the Cognitive Linguistics, this study researches the exaggerated quantity and abnormal quantity expressed by the PCDS.The PCDS is a special variety of phrase in contemporary Chinese. The complement of degree in the PCDS is also an important component in the system of the Chinese complement. To sum up, the PCDS, with the complex interior categories and compact form, can express rich meaning of degree with subjective feeling. Therefore this study contributes to both the Chinese language research and Chinese teaching as a second language.