Focus On The Comparison Of Chinese Mark " Is "

Focus is pragmatic concept belonging to surface structure. Focus can be classified into informational focus and contrastive focus. Informational focus is the representation of informational structure in syntactical structure. It is the most grammaticalized focus among various languages and can better account for the meaning of different word order. On the contrary, contrastive focus is a kind of focus in the sense of pragmatics. It has three representations: contrastive stress, prepositional focal elements and addition of focal marks.In Chinese, the character "shi" is a contrastive focal mark because the focus, marked by "shi" in a sentence embodying semantic relationship, possesses features of exhaustiveness and exclusiveness, which are also the features of contrastive focus. And "shi" does not change the original sentence structure. It strictly follows focal element without destroying other syntactical rules. "Shi" is a focal mark in its real sense. In the layer of syntax, "shi" is no longer a verb. Focal mark should be pronounced lightly. The focal mark "shi" is different from another two "shi": one is stressed "shi" denoting affirmation; the other is "shi" in an intransitive sentence denoting emphasis.In the sentence pattern that is usually acknowledged to embody contrastive focus, "de" in the middle of VO is the mark of past perfect tense while "de" at the end of a sentence exposes the tone of a speaker. There are two kinds of contrastive focal sentence patterns: one is determined only by a focal "shi" and the other is determined by the combination of a focal "shi" and informational focus. The usage of the focus marker is limited. In Chinese, focal mark originated from the link verbs. Different "shi" that denote emphasis in modern Chinese illustrate the process of the grammaticalization.Focus- sensitive operators determine semantic focus. Semantic focus is sensitive to the truth-value of a sentence and is on the layer of semantics. Contrastive focus can rule over semantic focus in that it can reduce the ambiguity that is due to the vagueness accompanied by the semantic orientation of focus-sensitive operators and thus help focus-sensitive operators be oriented to the sentential focus.