On Antonymous Modal Adverbs

This dissertation selects "fan zheng (反正)","hao dai (好歹)","zao wan (早晚)"three words as the main object of study to observe the features of antonymous modal adverbs. It is finded that antonymous modal adverbs are formed as a result of mental mechanism of pragmatics and grammaticalization.Generally speaking, antonymous modal adverbs appears in a sentence with two or more clauses whose surface structure and deep semantic message are generally different, but the deep semantic message anyhow will be "different situation, same result". Antonymous modal adverbs usually act as advanced predicate, express the positive attitudes of the speaker, trigger presupposition of the sentence and hint the topic focus, making the old information reviewed or further emphasized.Antonymous modal adverbs are very flexible in the sentence, but are also restricted and influenced by context. They are closely attached to discourse, acting as a connecting link between the preceding and the following and transmitting the speaker’s rich subjective experience. Therefore, antonymous modal adverbs are not on the grammar layer but modal layer or discourse layer. Another typical feature of antonymous modal adverbs is that they are typically colloquial, especially high-frequency in dialogues.In second language learning the main grammatical errors with antonymous modal adverbs are misuse, verboseness, mismatch, grammatical components missing, etc. Depending on the research of second language teaching in existence, this dissertation gives some suggestions for textbook compiling in the future, for example, to reposition the skill level, to give targeted explanations and scattered teaching.