"or Even" Multi-angle Study

The research object of the thesis is the word"shenzhi(甚至)". Based on the real corpus, we will observe the course of grammaticatization of"shenzhi(甚至)"and its mechanism of grammaticalization from diachronic angle. This will lay the foundation for analyzing the feature of"shenzhi(甚至)"in syntactic,semantic and pragmatic with the theory of Three levels. Meanwhile, we make some comparison between"shenzhi(甚至)"and its similar words, in order to reveal some rules of its usage in mordern Chinese. It falls into 6 parts:Introduction: A detailed introduction of current research on"shenzhi(甚至)"is given here, besides, we also explain the purpose of the thesis, significance theoretical basis, investigation methods and the sources of language data.Chapter 1 The evolution of"shenzhi(甚至)"and its mechanism of grammaticalization: this part starts from the research of its evolution, which is a Continuum with gradual grammaticalization, from phrase to adverb, from adverb to the co-existence of adverb and conjunction. Then we analyze its mechanism of grammaticalization, which include two parts that is mutual connection and mutually depending on for existence.Chapter 2 Syntactic Analysis of"shenzhi(甚至)": this chapter approaches from the perspective of syntactic location and syntactic function, it also specifies the relations between"shenzhi(甚至)"and the transformation of simple sentence and multiple sentence. In conclusion, no matter what"shenzhi(甚至)"is(adv/conj), it always have modal function.Chapter 3 Semantic Analysis of"shenzhi(甚至)": beginning with the basic meaning of"shenzhi(甚至)", we discuss the semantic feature of sentence with"shenzhi(甚至)"and its Semantic background."Comparison"is one outstanding feature in its sentence meaning. Meanwhile, when it is used to express the relation of progressives, the Semantic intensity is the highest.Chapter 4 Pragmatic Analysis of"shenzhi(甚至)": referencing to the focus theory and Presupposition Theory, we inspect the focus feature of"shenzhi(甚至)", presuppositions of the sentence and pragmatic function.Chapter 5 Comparison between"shenzhi(甚至)"and Correlation words and Teaching of"shenzhi(甚至)":in this chapter we focus on each kind of comparison, for example, comparison between"shenzhi(甚至)"and"erqie(而且)", comparison among"shenzhi(甚至)","naizhi(乃至)"and"yizhi(以至)". We hope that all the efforts can be useful for its learning.