A Semantic Analysis Of The Modern Chinese Verbs 'Lai' And 'Qu'

Masses of fundamental concepts and theories on semantics and cognitive-functional linguistics are utilized in this dissertation to probe into the reference point of verb "lai" "qu" in Modern Chinese,and the polysemic phenomenon of "lai" "qu" in Modern Chinese.At the same time,this dissertation compares "lai" "qu" in Modern Chinese with the ones in Korean,in order to improve the comprehension of "lai" "qu" in Modern Chinese to further extent.This dissertation includes seven chapters.In chapter one,the introduction consists in the objects for examining,the significance of the research,the range of argument,the approach of analyzing,the background of related theories and the explanation of the corpora's origin.The chapter two reviews the studies on directional verb in retrospect.Chapter three examines the reference point of "lai" "qu" in Modern Chinese. Initially,the essay pointe out that "qu" does not only mean "departing from the reference point",but also "from one place being independent of the reference point to another place having nothing to do with the reference point".Therefore,the reference point is directly related to Deixis.When we choose "lai"or "qu",the major reference point is "the speaker's location under the present circumstances" because the people always takes himself or herself as the centre.That is unmarked reference point.There is marked one too.That is,the person sometimes intentionally regards "the location in event time" or "the listener's location" as the reference point.The composition in chapter four investigates the six related sentence pattern: "Agent+lai₁(+ Location)+VP" "Agent+qu₁(+ Location)+VP";"Agent+lai₂+VP" "Agent+qu₂+VP";"PP/VP+lai₃+VP" "PP/VP qu₃+VP".Consequently,the differences of grammaticalization degree between "lai₁/qu₁" "lai₂/qu₂" "lai₃/qu₃" are revealed.Chapter five studies the asymmetric of "lai" and "qu".The meanings of directional verb "lai" and "qu" are divided into six classes.The essay reveals their inherent relationship by virtue of the metaphor theory in cognitive linguistics.In chapter six,the dissertation makes a comparison between "lai" "qu" in Modern Chinese and "(?)(gata)","(?)(ota)" in Korean.In spite of some differences between the two languages,neither the Modern Chinese nor Korean is verb-framed language or satellite-framed language. Chapter seven is the conclusion,summarizes the main ideas of thesis,and points out some further topics to be discussed.