A Cross-linguistic Study Of Grammatical Asymmetries Between Word Pairs Expressing ’Very Much/Many’ And ’Very Little/Few’

This article is about the syntactic function and asymmetric of grammar of "HenDuo" and "Hen Shao" by cross-linguistic study, based on the distribution ofstructuralism analysis, semantic analysis and syntactic analysis, on the basis ofdescription to explain the asymmetric internal causes of "Hen Duo" and "Hen Shao".In the study, combine the form and meaning, description and explanation as soon aspossible. The research in this paper has positive role in teaching Chinese as a foreignlanguage.The article mainly consists of six parts:Firstly, analysis of the symmetry and asymmetry of "Hen Duo" and "Hen Shao" inChinese from the semantic and syntactic function."Hen Duo" can serve as subject,object, attributive, verb complement, adjective complement in the sentence, it also canmodify quantifiers, but it can’t modify "number+quantity+noun" structure;"HenShao" can act as predicate, adverbial and verb complement in the sentence, it also canmodify "number+quantity+noun" structure, but it can’t modify quantifiers. Both ofthem show the apparent asymmetry.Secondly, describe the asymmetry in detail when "Hen Duo" and "Hen Shao"serve as attributive in the sentence, and give the explanation. All of the "Hen Shao" infront of the verb cannot be the attributive of subject, the structure like "Hen ShaoRen" is the omission form of "Hen Shao You Ren", so "Hen Shao NP" in front of theverb serve as adverbial in the sentence rather than attributive, is shows an obviousasymmetry with "Hen Duo" in the sentence; All of the "Hen Duo" after the verb canmodify a noun or noun structure freely in the sentence, but all of the "Hen Shao" afterthe verb can’t, if "Hen Shao" want to be attributive of object, there are someconditions, both of them show the apparent asymmetry.Thirdly,“few/many” and “little/much” also show the symmetry and asymmetryin English.“few”/“many” and “much” can be act as the attributive of subject andobject in the sentence, but "little" can only be the attributive of object; When “many”/“few”/“much”/“little” to be nouns and pronouns,“many” can be subject and objectin the sentence; But “few” only act as a subject in the sentence, both of them show theapparent asymmetry,“little” and “much” can be the subject and object in the sentence,the two didn’t show the asymmetry;“little” and “much” can be used as adverbials in the sentence, but "few" and "many" cannot, it also shows the asymmetry between them. In addition, in English, except "many" and "much", there are a lot of words in the meaning of "Hen Duo" in Chinese, such as "not a little/quite a little, not a few/quite a few, a (large) number of/(large) numbers of, A large/huge amount of/large amounts of, a lot of/lots of, plenty of/a plenty of, a good/great many, many a, scores of/dozens of, a great/good deal of, numerous, a large quantity of/large quantities of and so on. After check the English corpus’CORPUS OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ENGLISH’, found that these words can be used as attributive in the sentence, which accorded with the situation of Chinese.Fourthly,"beaucoup" and "peu" in French show the symmetry and asymmetry in it’s semantic and syntactic functions."Beaucoup" and "peu" can be act as adverbial in the sentence;"Beaucoup de" and "peu de" can be the attributive of subject and object;"beaucoup" can be subject in the sentence, but "peu" cannot. Both of them also showed obvious asymmetry.Fifthly,"(?)" and "(?)" displayed the symmetry and asymmetry in Korean in semantic and syntactic functions."(?)" can be used as attributive and predicate in the sentence,"(?)" can be an adverbial in the sentence;"(?)"/"(?)"/’(?)" and "(?)" only as a predicate in the sentence,"(?)" can only be attributive in the sentence. So, the related words in Korean also show obvious asymmetry.Finally, investigate "Duo Shao" and "Duo Shao De"/"Shao Duo" and "Shao Shao"/"Duo Shao Duo" and "Duo Shao Shao" in JianYang dialect from the semantic and syntactic functions, found that "Shao Duo/Duo Shao De/Duo Shao Duo" and "Shao Shao/Duo Shao/Duo Shao Shao"in JianYang dialect can be predicate and attribute in the sentence, show no asymmetry in the syntactic distribution, but the asymmetric in stress.Finally, found that "Shao Duo/Duo Shao De/Duo Shao Duo" and "Shao Shao/Duo Shao/Duo Shao Shao"in JianYang dialect have the same syntactic function with "Hen Duo" and "Hen Shao".