Research On “intentional” Manner Adverbs

Manner adverb is a special class of adverbs among modern Chinese adverbs, but few researches are focused on it in current academic circle. Therefore, 5 “intentional”manner adverbs, namely “designedly, deliberately, circumspectly, premeditatedly,purposely”, are chosen in the paper as the research objects. Based on the linguistic data in the Peking University Corpus(online version), by means of a combination of description and interpretation as well as the comparative analysis, this group of words is analyzed syntactically, semantically and pragmatically through adopting three plane theories and related cognitive linguistics and pragmatics knowledge.As shown from the research, in syntax, “intentional” manner adverbs are characterized that “di” can be added if in combination of verbs, which plays the role of “emphasis”; compared with other types of manner adverbs, there are two special places for “intentional” ones: First, the “intentional” manner adverbs can be used in conjunction with degree adverbs; second, when in conjunction with negative adverbs,negative adverbs can be placed in front or at the end of them.“Intentional” manner adverbs possess such semantic features as [+ describing person], [+ will], [+ controllable things] and [+ social activities]. Usually, the semantic orientation goes from the former part to the performers of behaviors. Due to different origins of their meanings, different words used in the structure of“intentional” manner adverbs + verb will lead to different focuses.In terms of pragmatics, most of the “intentional” manner adverbs are distributed in declarative sentences, followed by interrogative sentences, but rarely in imperative sentences. Besides, they have exclusive advantages that other manner adverbs don’t endow- can be used in exclamatory sentences; secondly, “intentional” manner adverbs can imply derogatory, neutral and commendatory meanings in different statements; finally, same as modal adverbs, “intentional” manner adverbs have subjective evaluation function and focus function.Since the late emergence of manner adverb, its research is still in the beginning stages, so the research results of this study will be conductive to further enriching the research system of adverbs. In addition, through the comparative study of this group of words, our understanding for the usage of these words will be more accurate, which can also provide some reference for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.