The Study On The Short-time-span Adverbs In Modern Chinese

This thesis features a synchronic research of the short-time-span adverbs (hereinafter referring to as STS adverbs) in modern Chinese. Three case studies are presented in the thesis for demonstration. The entire content of this paper is divided into the following five aspects.First, this thesis, based on previous research, defines"short-time-span (STS)"in a clearer way, categorizing it into"time-point STS"and"time-length STS". This thesis also classifies STS adverbs into three categories and demonstrates their differences in syntactic distribution.Second, the thesis gives a thorough syntactic and semantic description of STS adverbs. In terms of syntax, STS adverbs are characterized by adverbial. Their position in a sentence can be relocated or not. But their collocation with verbs and complements are found in compliance with certain rules. In terms of semantics, the thesis describes the semantic features of the STS adverbs from the perspectives of controllability, expectation and human-orientation, describes the aspect features of the adverbs from the perspective of factuality, and differentiates between objective short-time meaning and subjective short-time meaning.Third, the thesis analyses both quantitatively and qualitatively the syntactic function, semantic characteristics, aspect indication and contextual usage of four similar STS adverbs: ganjin, gankuai, ganmang and lianmang.Fourth, the thesis highlights a particular STS adverb—yankan, whose linguistic significance, the author believes, has been neglected. In this thesis, yankan is put in comparison with the similar mashang. The conclusion in a nutshell is that their basic syntactic function is the same. But when used in a sentence, their positions with the subject (either before or behind it) are different. In terms of semantic presentation, they differ in aspect features, controllability, expectation and discourse cohesion.Fifth, the multi-functional adverb cai is brought into research. This thesis believes that cai may denote an objective STS or a modal STS. Proving that if cai is used to indicate something has happened later than expected, such an usage is non-conventional. The objective STS usage is also carefully studied in terms of its syntactic environment. Last but not the least, the thesis explains tentatively why cai can also denote a subjective STS.