A Corpus-based Study Of The Syntax And Semantics Of The Functional Word He In Mandarin Chinese

In mandarin Chinese,the functional word group of he contains the words lian,tong,gen,he,gong and so forth.nd these words convey the function of the conjunction and the preposition.mong these words in the functional word group of he,scholars are much concerned with the distinction of the conjunction and the preposition with regard to the functional word he.In the previous studies,scholars have analyzed the distinction between the conjunction he and the preposition he from the perspectives of syntax and semantics respectively.To be exact,scholars have made a distinction between the conjunction he and the preposition he through the syntactic operations and the semantic features of constituents.Moreover,the word classes of the functional word he in the subject position and the object position have attracted the attention of scholars.However,most of researches have not analyzed the word classes of the functional word he in other syntactic positions,like the complement position,the adverbial position,and the attribute position.Besides,the semantic meaning and syntactic features of the functional word he are not analyzed in the previous studies.Therefore,this thesis attempts to provide a thorough description and explanation regarding the word classes of the functional word he in different syntactic positions,the semantic meaning and the syntactic features of the functional word he,combining the criteria proposed by Guo(2002)with the c-command and the x-bar theory in the generative grammar.In this paper,the corpus including 2000 items with the functional word he is collected from BCC.By virtue of the mixed approaches in which the description and the explanation are combined,and the qualitative and quantitative research methods are combined,this thesis attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What are the word classes of the functional word he in different syntactic positions and whether it has only one kind of word class in a certain syntactic position?(2)What are the syntactic features of the functional word he as a preposition and a conjunction within sentences?(3)What is the semantic meaning of the functional word he as a preposition and a conjunction ?The major findings are as follows.First,the functional word he in the subject position is identified as a conjunction and a preposition.The statistics show that there are six different syntactic environments of the functional word he in the subject position.First of all,10.65% of the functional word he is identified as a conjunction in the following three conditions:(1)X he Y is modified by adverbs which express the additivity or distributivity,like dou,fenbie,tong and so forth.(2)X he Y as a whole is modified by the attribute.(3)X he Y is the subject of the relational nouns.Moreover,7.5% of the functional word he is identified as a preposition in the following two conditions:(1)There are adverbs between X and he Y.(2)X is omitted and the subject of a sentence is he Y.Besides these five conditions,when the sentence structure is X he Y + V,15.3% of the functional word he is identified as a conjunction,and 1.5% of the functional word he is identified as a preposition.Secondly,the proportions of the functional word he in the object position,the attribute position,the adverbial position and the complement position are respectively 44.15%,9.8%,6.75%,and 4.35%.When the functional word he is in these four syntactic positions,it is merely identified as a conjunction.Second,the functional word he as a preposition is able to connect nouns.The whole part of the functional word he and the constituent connected by it is as an adjunct of the verbs.nd there is no thematic relation between the verb and the constituent connected by the functional word he.In this condition,the whole part of the functional word he and the constituent can be moved within a sentence.However,the functional word he as a conjunction is able to connect nouns and predicates.nd the functional word he and the constituents connected by it are merged in a conjunction phrase with the conjunction as the head.In this condition,the constituents cannot move to other syntactic positions within a sentence.Third,there are two types of the semantic meaning of the functional word he as a conjunction.The first one is that the functional word he adds all the constituents connected by it.nd the other one is that the functional word he distributes the constituents connected by it.When the functional word he is identified as a preposition,it aims at introducing the target who accompanies an action and the target of an action.On the basis of the previous studies on the analysis of the word classes of the functional word he,this study provides more information and makes a full description on the word classes of the functional word he in different syntactic positions,which provides new perspectives and enlightenment for the analysis of the distinction between the conjunction he and the preposition he.Moreover,it attempts to help Chinese learners better master the functional words and provide new teaching methods and ideas for those who teach Chinese as a foreign language.