A Research Of The Asymmetry Of Positive And Negative Forms Modified By "很"

This thesis discusses the asymmetry between the positive form"很X"and negative form''很不X". The previous study is concentrated on how to explain the asymmetry with pragmatics customs. This thesis tries to explain it from semantic features of the head word, the quantitative relationship and the axiom about natural language's positive and negative form.The thesis is subdivided into five parts:In the introduction, the author looks back the production and problems still existed in this field. The previous production is mainly about adjectives, verbs seldom involved, and in the form of individual cases, explaining it from long-standing custom. The source of examples in this thesis and the thought in writing this thesis are also shown in this part.Part one gives a detailed description about the asymmetry between the positive form and negative form. Based on the previous study, the author enriches the examples about verbs and also finds some new asymmetric properties:the same word modified by"很"with different positive and negative frequency, and the unequal province of semantics.Part two gives some reasons to the asymmetry from pragmatics, then explains the asymmetry from the axiom about natural language's positive and negative form and the quantitative properties.Part three suggests that semantic degree and quantitative properties is the essential reason to the asymmetry between positive form and negative form. The necessary condition and sufficient condition of adjectives and verbs entering''很不X"structure is also analyzed in this part.Part four is about the verb phrase modified by"很", showing their positive and negative cases, explaining the reason to asymmetry. The epilogue summarized the author's research. Based on the previous rules, this thesis enriches the cases of verb and verb phrase, and also finds some new asymmetric properties. Striving to be objective and scientific, the author tries to supply two reasons besides the long-standing customs.