The Study Of Coordinations And Pseudo-coordinations In Mandarin Chinese

The coordinate structure is a common phenomenon of almost all languages in theworld. Studies on coordinate structures in Mandarin Chinese have always been the hottopic in the formal linguistics fields. With regard to the semantic readings and otherissues about coordinate structures, a large number of researchers have proposeddifferent opinions. However, there is still no detail study about the factors influencingsemantic readings of Chinese coordinate structures. Meanwhile, linguists seldom dealwith the concrete features of Chinese binomials and Chinese pseudo-coordinations.This paper deals with some syntactic and semantic features of Chinese coordinatestructures and pseudo-coordinations. We mainly discuss the following two questions:(1) What are the factors influencing the semantic readings of Chinesecoordination? What are features of conjunctive binomials in Mandarin Chinese, andfrom which what constraints on conjuncts can we find?(2) Are there pseudo-coordinations in Mandarin Chinese? If there are, what arethe etiologies?Regarding the two questions mentioned above, we have made a series oftheoretical study and have given our correspondingly theoretical answers. First of all,semantically, we argue that there exist Boolean and Non-Boolean reading ofconjunctions in Chinese and the different readings are caused by the major noun orthe major verb and are also caused by multiple-referential adjectives and adverbs inone certain sentence, meanwhile, the study goes for the dynamic relation of the twodifferent readings. Then, we find out three major features of Chinese binomials. Thatis, firstly, there are marked binomials and non-marked binomials and the mark-nessfeature is not random. Secondly, the marked coordinate binomials are of only pluralmeaning. Thirdly, the semantic meaning of the whole coordinate binomials is notdirectly connected with the separate semantic meaning of every single conjunct. Fromthe studies of binomials, we find that there are some constraints on conjuncts, such asthe category and order of conjuncts. Finally, many researchers, such as GuoLongsheng (1991) and Heycock&Petersen (2012), have done some researches to thepseudo-coordinations in other languages based on which we put forward that therealso exist pseudo-coordinations in Mandarin Chinese and we find that there are somefactors resulting in the phenomenon of pseudo-coordination in Chinese. For example,the categorial status of conjunction, like ‘he’ which can act both as a conjunction anda preposition, the limited usage of conjunction ‘he’ and Relativized Minimality. In this thesis, we discuss the syntax and semantics of Chinese coordinatestructures and pseudo-coordinations and try to answer two theoretical questions. Ouranalysis and classification of the factors influencing the Boolean reading andNon-Boolean reading of Chinese coordinate structures and the verification of theexistence and etiologies of Chinese pseudo-coordination present a new perspective forfurther research on conjunction structures.