A Study Of The Grammaticalization Of Chinese And English Interrogatives

Interrogative sentence are the most common phenomenon of language use, while interrogative words, as the carrier of interrogative information, are also the most common part of speech. Hence, the study of interrogative sentences and interrogative words has been paid close attention to by scholars for ages. Scholars at home and abroad classified and described interrogative words from the angle of traditional grammar and generative grammar. What is more, they especially gave high attention to interrogative pronouns. This thesis, regarding Chinese and English interrogatives as research objects, based on the theory of grammaticalization in cognitive linguistics, analyses the transmutation of interrogatives in detail. Although the two kinds of interrogatives belong to different language systems, both of them have the interrogative usages. Thus, they have something in common on the aspects of the usages.As to the contrast of interrogatives, there are already some related studies. Since those studies are mainly about the contrast of the interrogative usages, this thesis mainly focuses on the relationship between interrogatives and focus as well as the transmutation of Chinese and English interrogatives. Through the studies of this thesis, we can conclude that there are various kinds of methods to convey the meanings of focus, and also there are shared features of interrogatives and focus. Besides, the change of the focus markers’ methods influences the ways of questioning. Since the interrogatives themselves are the natural focuses of the sentences with interrogatives, the syntactic behaviors of interrogatives are in accordance with the focus expressing methods of that language. Therefore, English interrogatives should be located at the beginning of the sentence to be focused on, while in modern Chinese, we only need to add "shi" before the part that we want to focus on. As to the transmutation of interrogatives, there are similarities and differences. The interrogatives in both languages have exclamative usages, generalized usages and indefinite usages. But Chinese interrogatives also have the usages of chained generalized reference, overlapping interrogatives referring to proper nouns and negation functions and so on. English interrogatives can be used as clause markers and so on.Even though there are some differences between them on usages, they both have many similarities in terms of grammaticalization. The transmutation of interrogatives is actually the result of grammaticalization. Meanwhile, the process is restricted by the mechanism of grammaticalization. This kind of process reflects the characteristics of grammaticalization:subjectivity and unidirectionality. The dynamic evolution from the prototype semanteme to edging semanteme is the result of strengthening subjectivization.To sum up, this thesis, which is based on the predecessors’ researches and under the guidance of relevant theories of cognitive linguistics, is to contrast the transmutation of Chinese and English interrogatives. At the same time, the thesis explains the reasons for the transmutation. What the thesis has done is to enrich the contrast of Chinese interrogative words and English interrogative words, even the contrast of Chinese and English.