A Corpus-Based Study On Four Modal Particles In Three Chinese Translations Of Gosples

The majority of the work done on modal particles has based on thecorpus of modern Chinese. This dissertation intends to explore a new typeof corpus, which is the corpus of Chinese as a target language.Chapter one presents a brief introduction to the research objectives,the value of the research, methodologies, source of corpus and theframework of this paper.Chapter two makes a review on mood and modal particles in modernChinese literature as well as mood and modality in English literature. Tothe former one, an in-depth review on modal particles studied in thecorpus of Chinese as a target language has been conducted.Chapter three to five conduct an exhaustive investigation into ‘a’,‘ba’,‘ne’ in Gospels of three Chinese translations. This provides us with aninsight into how these three modal particles are used in them. Comparingand contrasting how ‘a’,‘ba’ and ‘ne’ are used in written language andChinese as a target language, some distributive traits have been identified.Chapter six conducts an exhaustive investigation into ‘ma’ in Gospelsof three Chinese translations. A research into the correspondencesentences in three Chinese translations of the general questions inMatthew and an investigation into the correspondence sentences inEnglish translation of general questions with ‘ma’ in the end in Matthew also have been conducted. The data received shows that the main Englishequivalence of a general question in Chinese with the modal particle ‘ma’in the end is a general question.Chapter seven explores the in-depth reasons of why the distributivedistinctions exist on four modal particles. Based on the findings from theliterature review and analysis of the data received from the investigationstages, two initial conclusions have been reached: firstly modal particlesare non-mandatory components; secondly they are multi-functional.Chapter eight presents the possible innovation points of this paper andreveals the issues awaiting further study.