A Study On The Syntax Of "Haobu+X" Construction

Chinese redundant negation refers to some constructions contain negative words such as “bu,mei,bie,” etc.without negative meaning.It is a special phenomenon that exists in modern Chinese and has special effects and functions in certain circumstances.Many linguists have studied the redundant negation extensively and deeply.Their research provides many inspirations from the perspective of semantics and pragmatics,but there are relatively few studies based on the syntactic characteristics of negation markers in the construction.Under the framework of Chomsky's Transformational Generative Grammar,this thesis,based on Pollock's NegP Hypothesis,takes the typical Chinese redundant negative construction haobu+X as an example,mainly discusses the syntactic properties of haobu+X including its grammatical functions,and compares the similarities and differences with hao+X.Haobu+X can present both affirmative and negative meanings,which is a very special linguistic phenomenon in modern Chinese.Formally,X can be APs,VPs and NPs.Among them,APs account for the vast majority,followed by VPs,and NPs take the least proportion.When expressing different meaning,the negative target of bu changes.To be specific,when haobu+X expresses a negative meaning,that is,as a general negation construction,hao is an adverb of degree and bu is a functional head with its own projection,X will firstly be combined with bu,and then the combination buX will accept the modification of hao,so the entire construction should be interpreted as “hao+buX”.when haobu+X expresses a positive meaning,that is,as a redundant negation construction,bu is no longer a functional head of NegP and it combines with hao to form an AdvP,which is equivalent to “hao” or “hen”.X is under the modification of haobu,and the construction is interpreted as “haobu+X”.Furthermore,this thesis compares haobu+X with a similar construction hao+X,which is also a very high-frequency used construction in the spoken language of modern Chinese.Both hao+X and haobu+X can serve as predicate,attribute,adverbial or complement in the sentence.However,unlike the haobu+X construction,thegrammatical functions of hao+X will change easily with the change of the part of speech of “hao”.In addition,this thesis point out that whether the irony hao+X or the redundant negation haobu+X,they both have the effect of emphasizing the expression and highlighting the feelings of speakers.