A Study Of Reversible Sentence Patterns In Modern Chinese

Because of the influence of various factors, such as logical thinking and language habits, modern Chinese has its strict requirement in syntactic structure, which means that the position of the Subject and the Object are relatively stable. In general, the subject is located in the front of the verb and the object is located at the back of the verb. However, the existence of the reversible sentence breaks the norm, which has aroused universal concern of Chinese scholars. As a special syntactic and semantic phenomenon in modern Chinese grammar system, the basic feature is that the subject and object of the sentence can interchange but the meaning of the sentence remains unchanged. For example:Ten people eat a pot of rice.←�'A pot of rice eats ten people. The earth is covered with white snow.←�'The white snow covers the earth. Grammarians have been deepened the study on the reversible sentences, including the nature, the type and the exchange motive of it since1950s.But restricted by various conditions, the predecessors’explanation is not broad enough and there are still some phenomenon cannot be ruled out. This paper conducts tentative research on the basis of predecessors’ achievements and the existing materials. The whole paper is divided into seven parts, as follows:The first chapter is introduction. It reviews the summary of the reversible sentence, including the properties, classification, and so on. And then it defines the study object and the problems needing attention in the study process. Finally it illustrates the significance of the research and the source of corpus.The second chapter is the type of reversible sentences. On the basis of the reversible sentence classification research, it reclassifies combining the sentence structure and the semantic characteristics of verb.The third chapter is comparison of type a and type b.This chapter from the angles of semantic and pragmatic analysis the differences of type a and type b after the interchange of the subject and object, thus proving that the reversible sentences also has some changes in the situation.The fourth chapter analysis factors affecting the reversible sentences formed. This chapter carries on a comprehensive study on factors affecting formed, from the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic conditions, etc. The fifth chapter is about the choice of the reversible sentences under dynamic discourse. In this chapter we put the reversible sentences under the dynamic discourse and analyze the influence of the discourse environment for the choice of reversible sentence type a and type b.The sixth chapter is about the importance of the word order. Based on the theory of linguistic typology, it further clarifies the importance of word order by the comparisons between Chinese and English.The last chapter presents a summary of the main conclusions and summarizes the merits and demerits of this dissertation.