An Investigation On The Domain, Feature And Meaning Of "Men" (们) And The Referential Categories Of "X+Men" (X+们)

This dissertation investigages on the "X+Men" (X+们) ("X" are bare nouns or noun phrases) problem in modern Chinese, which mainly consists of the governing domain, grammatical feature and grammatical meaning of "Men" (们), as well as the referential categories of "X+Men". Among the four aspects, the governing domain and grammatical meaning are the key points. On the one hand, we focus on the grammatical categories of "X", especially when it comes to the cases of "quantifiers+Men" and analyzing the syntactic features of "X+Men", upon which we further confirm our view about the governing domain of "Men". On the other hand, first we discuss the grammatical properties of "Men",and we carefully analyze the semantic categories of "X" and summarize the multi-usages of "Men". With these analyses, we conclude the grammatical meaning. Moreover, this dissertation discusses the referential categories of "X+Men", from both the qualitative and quantitative perspectives.This dissertation contains five chapters,which can be generalized as follows.Chapter 1:introduction. In the beginning, to determine the object and the scope of the study, which is "X+Men" in modern Chinese, among which "X" are bare nouns and noun phrases. Secondly, to clarify the significance of this dissertation, choose the method of researching, and to explain the source of language materials. Then, to make a summary on the researching status of "Men" from the aspect of collocational restriction, grammatical meaning, domain, grammatical feature and so on.Chapter 2 mainly discusses about the domain of "Men". At first, to discuss about the types and characteristics of "X" in "X+Men" from the structural types of "X" and the collocations between "Men" and quantifier components, then make an overall analysis on the syntactic performances of "X+Men", and to discuss about the features of syntactic distribution as well as the restriction of syntactic structure of "X+Men", and finally, through investigation, statistics, as well as the reduction to absurdity, we can confirm that the domain of "Men" still needs further study. On one hand, we can confirm from the semantic perspective that the noun which "Men" attached on should always have components of context location; on the other hand, we can confirm from the form perspective that "Men" can control a modifier-noun phrase, and finally to confirm that in essence, the domain of "Men" is a phrase, but not a noun.Chapter 3:the grammatical feature and meanings of "Men". First we take "Men" as an auxiliary word.Then this chapter mainly discusses about the semantic categories of "X" and discovers that "Men" can match not only with a noun refers to people, but also with an object noun or an inanimate noun.On the base of the previous research of the usages of "Men", we put forward the "unification" usage and hold the view that there are essential differences between "Men" in Chinese and the suffix -s in English. "Men" has many semantic features which are not hold by the suffix -s. finally, we ascertained that "Men" is not only groupment but also given information, and on the base of which we hold the view that "Men" in "X+Men" is an auxiliary word which can express the given group meanings.Chapter 4:the referential categories of "X+Men". The first section of this chapter discusses something about reference, clarified the definition of reference, the classification system of reference, and finally determined to use Liu Shun’s classification system of reference as the referential standard of this dissertation, and further, made a definition of definiteness, generic meaning and indefiniteness, which is based on the classification system of Liu Shun. The second section has ascertained the lexical form of definiteness and generic meaning in the beginning, and furthermore, studied the referential categories of "X+Men", we hold the view that "X+Men" can not only be definite, but also be generic or indefinite, and it must be components of contextual location there when expressing indefiniteness.Chapter 5 is conclusion. At first, the writer makes a brief summary of the content of this dissertation, sums up the main point of view of this dissertation, and uses the concept "the degree of distinguishability" for reference to made an introduction of the features of "Men", and holds the view that when a noun component is very high on its degree of distinguishability, it can be more easily Co-appeared with "Men".