A Language-Philosophical Study Of The “Benwei” Views In Chinese Grammar

This thesis compares the five most influential benwei views to find out which benwei unit is the most effective for establishing Chinese grammar in terms of its use in communication.From a language-philosophical perspective,the whole research is conducted by answering the following three questions:(1)What types of meaning does each of the five benwei units(basic units of analysis)of Chinese grammar function to express?(2)From a language-philosophical perspective,which one of the five benwei units of Chinese grammar works most effectively in terms of the meaning it expresses in the use of Chinese in communication?(3)Why is that benwei unit the most effective?In order to answer the three questions,the standard to decide which benwei unit is the best is set first.In terms of the prerequisite for communication to happen,the expression of an essence,namely,an independent thought in Frege's theory of meaning,is taken as the standard for establishing Chinese grammar.Figuring out the types of meaning expressed by each benwei unit and then checking whether the types of meaning are an independent thought can help find out which benwei unit can express an essence for communication to become possible.Thus Frege's theory of meaning and a thought-analyzing model built on Frege's meaning theory and predicate logic are selected to constitute the theoretical framework.Through Frege's theory of meaning,the types of meaning expressed by each benwei unit are clearly listed in chapter four and in turn these types of meaning are further analyzed with the thought-analyzing model built in chapter three.From the analysis of chapter four,the study finds that words and characters cannot express an independent thought at all and only part of sentences,phrases and clauses can express an independent thought.For phrases,only subject-predicate phrases can express an independent thought,while for sentences and clauses,they may just constitute part of an independent thought when two sentences or two clauses are needed to form an independent thought.Thus all these benwei units(basic units ofanalysis)fail to cover all the independent thoughts included in Frege's theory of meaning.However,as the utterance can always express an independent thought with a set of topic and predicate,the utterance benwei unit is proposed to be the most effective for the establishment of Chinese grammar in terms of its use in communication,which can satisfy the criterion set in this thesis on the one hand,and can reflect the linguistic reality of the Chinese language and extend the grammar study of Chinese to the field of discourse grammar on the other hand.Putting forward the utterance benwei view,this research is a first attempt to provide a common ground for further study of Chinese grammar and,conducted from the language-philosophical perspective,it also draws the attention of the audience to the thought expressed by the Chinese language expressions,thus providing a new approach to the grammar study of the Chinese language for researchers of the related field.