Modern Chinese, The True Meaning Of Adverbs

This paper, divided into four chapters excluding the preface and conclusion, mainly discusses the word class, distribution and expression, groups-division and internal orders, semantic orientation of modal adverbs.The first chapter aims to gain a clear idea of modal adverbs'member-scope. By comparison between some special words, such as"quan35 su51, da51 li51"and other adverbs, we decided to classify them into the adverb category. Besides, some modal adverbs have common border with nouns, verbs, and especially differentiation words. In our opinion, modal adverbs and differentiation words have similar position in the word class system, which is the critical point among nouns, verbs and adjectives.In the second chapter, we divided modal adverbs into six groups, which are willing, condition, companion, condition, status and manner.We try to testify such division by their internal order, which is"willing>2 condition> companion> condition> status >manner". Each group has correspondingly different background information. The third chapter focuses on the orientation of modal adverbs. The structures, such as"V1V2"and adverbial modifier distribution both have a great influence on modal adverbs. In addition, the variation of word meanings, including integration, absorption and generalization, affected a lot. In the grammaticalization process, the mechanisms, such as re-analysis, analogy and disyllabification, are also very important.The fourth chapter discusses newly-occurred structures in three syllables. Compared with traditional words, they have special meanings, collocations and memberships. We brought up a new conception as"semi-prefix", and analyzed the reasons of their functional transformation and their developing trend in the future.