The Polarity Of The Characteristics Of Modern Chinese Modal Verbs

In this paper, we will study the polarity sensitivity (that is, distribution of context) of Chinese modal verbs (such as "yong", "xiao" "yi", "gan", "bi xu", etc.). Through investigating the distribution of the modern Chinese polarity modal verbs in contexts, this study try to explore the cognitive reasons and rhetorical factors that influence their distribution. Polarity refers to the tendency of modal proposition to positive or negative contexts. Polarity sensitivity words are generally divided into positive polarity sensitive words (PPWs) and negative polarity sensitive words (NPWs). PPWs typically distribute in the affirmative sentence, and the distribution of NPWs is in denial sentences. The modal verbs of the contemporary Chinese language have such characteristics in distribution. Some can only distribute in the affirmative sentence (such as "dei", "bi xu", etc.), we call these words "positive modal verbs", others distribute in denial contexts in most cases (such as "yong", "xiao", "yi", etc.), and we call them "negative modal verbs". Polarity sensitivity is a grammatical statute of natural language. But the statute is conventional. The rationale here is to strengthen or weaken the rhetorical function of tone. There is a common feature of polarity-sensitive words, namely, affectivity. Which means if the polarity sensitive words have an appropriate permission in the same structure, the former can be licensed by the latter. The contexts which can allow the negative modal verbs usually include the negative sentences, questions, conditionals, co-occurrence with some negative words such as "zhi", "zui", etc. In this paper we consider polarity sensitivity is the rhetorical conventionalization of the natural language. The word's meaning and its rhetorical feature together lead to the sensitivity. Polarity items tend to be associated with certain kinds of pragmatic affect, frequently serving either to intensify or attenuate the rhetorical force of an utterance. According to this, we divide the polarity modal verbs into emphatic words and attenuating words. The emphatic words are used to intensify the rhetorical force and can contain the other proposition and the attenuating words just the reverse. This paper argues that the scalar semantic properties of the polarity modal words(eg, "bi xu" shows a maximal scalar degree when it refers to the necessity of things; "yong", "xiao" show a maximal scalar degree when they stand for "need")make them have the potential rhetorical function to intensify or attenuate the tone of a sentence, the rhetorical purpose (such as "politeness" or "strengthening the imperative mood") decides which words to be picked up, and the contexts the words distribute in(such as negative sentences, questions, conditionals, etc)make the potential rehtorical function come true. Then some modal words become polarity sensitive through the optimal matching (the scalar semantic degree and the rehtorical function). In other words, some rigid polarity requirements of the modal words are actually limited by their rhetorical function. For example, "bi xu" must be in a positive sentence when it is used to intensify the command voice, and "yong", "xiao" aimed to attenuate the voice must be used in negative sentences, questions, conditionals, etc.This paper has three theoretical meaning. First, the paper analyzes and sorts Chinese modal verbs exhaustively; and takes "gan" as an example of the emphatic words and "yong" as an example of the attenuating words respectively to explain why they could be allowed to be present in various syntactic contexts. Second, this paper presents the idea that the word's meaning, its rhetorical function and its distribution contexts should be coordinated. The idea can make up some deficiencies of the traditional methods, for example, it overcomes the deficiency in Monotonicity that all efforts were concentrating on the structure of sentences and ignoring the motivation factors. It realizes that logical inference is not necessary. When a scalar inference exists, the logical inference can be cancelled. The most important thing is to probe the relationship between the modal items and the licensing operators. Third, the Scalar logic Theory, the best Relevance Theory and the self-information thoughts in Information Theory are used in the paper to analyze the meaning and function of the modal words in different contexts.This paper has six parts:The first chapter introduces the modal verbs study in Chinese. The second chapter reviews some theory about the polarity modal verbs from Chinese and foreign scholars in recent years.The third chapter divides the negative modal verbs into two categories, the emphatic ones and the attenuating ones. It tries to find out what contexts they can be licensed and why they can be licensed.ChapterⅣ, we will study the emphatic polarity item "gan" with the help of the scalar model based on probability.ChapterⅤ, we will study the polarity sensitive feature of "yong"ChapterⅥdraws the conclusions.