A Contrastive Study On Chinese And English Adverbs Of Necessity Conjecture Category

There exist in both Chinese and English some adverbs denoting necessity conjecture,such as biran(??),yiding(??),necessarily,certainly,and they play an indispensable role in conveying the notion.Previous studies focused mainly on simple descriptions of a single or several necessity conjecture adverbs(henceforth,NCAs)in the same language,but not on the universal features across languages and the degree of subjectivity expressed by NCAs.This thesis makes a synchronic contrastive study of Chinese and English NCAs from three aspects,namely,semantics,syntax,and pragmatics.To identify the degree of subjectivity connoted by Chinese and English NCAs,the author combines corpus statistics and questionnaires measuring the subjectivity of some choice NCAs,completed by native speakers of Chinese and English with sound intuition.It turns out that there are both similarities and differences between Chinese and English NCAs.The similarities are obvious in terms of semantics,syntax and pragmatics.Semantically,Chinese and English NCAs share the common semantic features,including [±objective basis],[±future situation],[±true conclusion],and [±adverse conclusion].Syntactically,Chinese and English NCAs often co-occur with the thirdperson pronouns,negative adverbs,and modal verbs which indicate high possibility.Pragmatically,there is a gradient continuum of strong and weak subjectivity between Chinese and English NCAs.Moreover,Chinese and English NCAs frequently appear in declaratives and exclamatives,but never in interrogatives and imperatives.Major differences can be found in syntax and pragmatics.From the syntactic perspective,English NCAs enjoy a more flexible distribution than Chinese ones.English NCAs can occur initially,medially,or finally,while Chinese ones only appear in the medial position,and English NCAs can appear before or after modal verbs while Chinese ones usually occur before them.In addition,it is acceptable for two NCAs to co-occur in English,but not in modern Chinese.From the pragmatic perspective,some initial English NCAs can be used as cohesive ties while Chinese ones can not.The similarities and differences between Chinese and English NCAs,especially the different degrees of subjectivity in specific contexts,may be relevant to ChineseEnglish translation in achieving better accuracy.Hopefully,this thesis is of some theoretical and practical significance.In theory,it has shed some light on the features of Chinese and English NCAs,thus contributing to the development of linguistic typology and contrastive linguistics.In practice,this study may be of some help to the teaching and learning of Chinese and English NCAs,and to translation between Chinese and English.