A Contrastive Analysis Of The Grammaticalization Of Modals "Will" And "Yao"

Modality, due to its ambiguities and complexities, is still one of the most popular topics in linguistic studies nowadays. It plays an important role in daily life, which covers quite a few expressions. Among these expressions, modal verbs which are used to express people’s subjective attitudes or assumptions, are the major effective ways.In human’s cognitive model, "will" is a typical modal. However, there are still controversies on the property of "will" as well as its corresponding Chinese translation "yao". In modern society, "will" can be translated into "yao". However, the prototypical senses of "will" and "yao" are totally different. Therefore, based on OED, BNC, COCA and CCL corpora, the diachronic evolutions of "will" and "yao" are described in detail. The mechanisms for their evolution and the evolutionary similarities and distinctions together with the reasons for them are presented. Furthermore, this thesis attempts to prove that "will" and "yao" are modals from diachronic perspective.Through the contrastive analysis of the diachronic evolution of "will" and "yao", the following results can be found. Firstly, there are three aspects of changes. In the property aspect, the diachronic evolution pathway of "will" is:content word(noun and verb)> content word/modal word. While the diachronic property evolution pathway of "yao" is:noun> verb> modal. In the semantic aspect, the diachronic evolution pathway of "will" is:"wish"> "intention"> "require"> "be going to". The diachronic semantic evolution pathway of "yao" is:"waist"> "tie something to the waist"> "intercept"> "strive for" and "obtain">"wish" and "want"> "need" and "be bound to"> "invite"> "wish" and "assumption">"be going to". In the modality aspect, both of "will" and "yao" are experienced:dynamic modality> deontic modality> epistemic modality. Secondly, the mechanisms of "will" and "yao" are metaphor and metonymy. Thirdly, the similarities and distinctions in the diachronic evolution of "will" and "yao" together with the reasons for them are presented.Through the present study, it is expected to have a better understanding of English and Chinese language and their universal rules, so as to better use the two languages. It is also expected to provide a theoretical value for the contrastive analysis of English and Chinese language and the study of linguistic universals and at the same time, to provide a practical value for language evolution as well as throw a new light on language teaching and translation.