"an Amount Of Name Indefinite Nouns Main Statement

This thesis discusses the licensing conditions of indefinite subjects in Mandarin Chinese based on the Optimality Theory. We find that all parts of the sentence will influence the licensing of indefinite NPs. In general, there are three types of parts in the sentence that influence indefinite subjects:the condition of subject, the condition of predict and the condition of the parts out of the sentence. When this three parts have enough message and high description, the listener will able to connect the indefinite subjects with the old message, so that he/she can understand the sentence. Otherwise, the indefinite subjects will not be accepted.The thesis is composed of one preface and five chapters.The preface explains the scope of this research, its theoretical background, research methods, research aim and corpora.The first chapter gives a thorough account of the research of indefinite subjects. Fan Jiyan(1985)considered there are many indefinite subjects in Mandarin Chinese, which guides or influences the research at home or abroad. After that, a large number of researchers discussed the indefinite subject from the standpoint of syntax and semantics, for example, Yang Suying(1999),Deng Siying(2003),Lu Shuo & Pan Haihua(2008). There are also some researchers discuss indefinite subjects based on pragmatics theory, such as Xu Liejiong(1997), Cao Xiuling(2003). This thesis is based on their research.Chapter2,3,4 are the core parts of the thesis. Based on the Optimality Theory, we focus on the licensing conditions of indefinite subjects, and lay different scores according to different condition. The higher the score is, the more acceptable indefinite subjects are. For the subject, adding the message of subject will increase the licensing. As for the predict part, the structure, semantic type, the message of object, and the condition of the additional parts of predict will all have strong effect on the licensing of the indefinite subject. The parts out of the sentence will also influence the licensing of the indefinite subject, including:the additional parts in front of the sentence, the types of the sentence, the textual condition, and so on.Chapter5 concludes the thesis with a final discussion and the summary of the overall thesis. Besides the conclusions, some deficiencies are also mentioned, which will be ameliorated by further researches henceforth.The thesis has the following opinions:Maxim of Quantity and description will decide if an indefinite subject could be accepted; definite subjects couldn't be accepted in "one+ quantitafier+ NPs"; in some conditions, individual-level predicates could also be allowed in the indefinite subjects' sentence.