A Comparative Study Of Frequency Adverbial Conjunctions In Chinese And English

Frequency adverbial conjunctions(ACs)zongshi(??),youshi(??)in Chinese and always,sometimes in English are widely applied in written or spoken language.Although a considerable portion of scholars have studied and investigated this kind of words,most of scholars only regard them as pure adverbs.This thesis mainly compares Chinese and English frequency ACs from the perspectives of syntactic,semantic features and pragmatic functions.This thesis is conducted to explore the similarities and differences of zongshi(??),youshi(??)and always,sometimes.The data we have collected all comes from two authoritative corpora: Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA)and Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU(CCL).As far as the syntactic features are concerned,the thesis adopts quantitative method to explore the syntactic structures and distributions of these adverbial conjunctions.Then,this thesis makes a qualitative analysis of their semantic and pragmatic functions by using the proper tables and figures.Lastly,the major findings and implications are summarized.At the same time,the limitations and suggestions for further study are also pointed out.It is found out that Chinese and English frequency ACs do share some similarities in terms of the syntactic,semantic features and pragmatic functions.Additionally,the differences have also been discussed.The major findings can be summed up as follows: 1.In terms of syntactic features,the syntactic structures of Chinese frequency ACs are relatively fixed in the initial or medial position,while that of English frequency ACs show more flexibility and can even occur alone.2.In terms of semantic features,both Chinese and English frequency ACs carry the time features,positive or negative features.As for the time features,when compared with Chinese frequency ACs,English has various types of time features,including the pre-temporal,the present and the post-temporal features.3.In terms of pragmatic functions,frequency ACs mainly have three functions,namely,focus mark function,emphasis function and subjectivization function.Among three of them,the English ones express stronger focus mark and subjectivization function.It is hoped that the present study is helpful for further study of frequency ACs.