"..." The Structure Of The Semantic Role And Focus Are Assigned

This thesis mainly discusses the semantic roles and their focus assigning of thestructure "shi……de" including the verb kernel. The discussion involves severalaspects hereinafter:In part one, it introduces the present investigations of the structure "shi……de"and their problems which enlighten us a lot.In part two, there are three syntactic constrains in the structure "shi……de" : notall predication can constitute the structure "shi……de"; the initial form of thestructure "shi……de" must be a subject-predicate structure; the structure "shi ……de" has a selective constrained relation with the verbs which exist in it. The function of the structure "shi……de " is to split the subject-predicate structure.In part three, it analyzes the co-existing relations of the 17 semantic roles in thestructure "shi……de"; it sums up the prototypical effects of 17 semantic roles in 37argument selection sequences through this relation. The transitivity analysis of thestructure "shi……de" provides the strong support for the prototypical effect of thiskind of semantic roles and the selective restriction on different verbs.In part four, the focus, i.e. a sort of non-communion information between thespeaker and hearer. There's only one type of focus--the information focus. Thestructure "shi……de" is a focus-sensitive operator, and any component in principlecan become the focus in its scope. In the structure "shi……de" there are two types ofassignations: the unmarked assignation and the marked assignation; the former presents the fixed feature, while the latter the floating feature. When the different semantic roles are assigned as the focus, they form a strong rank sequence: agent > manner > time > location > proposition > cause > source > patient > instrument > range > dative > {material, theme, causer} > {sentient, goal} > relevant. The topic and its feature make the marked focus assignation present a trend of dynamic resolution in the structure "shi……de".In part five, the transformation of the form A-- "subject + (shi) + adverbialmodifier + verb + de + object" with the form B--"subject + (shi) + adverbialmodifier + verb+ object + de " is not universal; on the other hand it is a kind of radicalattitude to consider the structure "shi……'de" as the cleft sentence "It is……that" inEnglish because that neglects linguistic reality.