A Study On The Manner Category In Mandarin Chinese

This paper is a research about Chinese semantic categories system, in which the mainly discussing subject is manner category. The research of Chinese semantic categories system is a direct representation of a research method which means "beginning with grammatical meaning research to explore grammar form". And this research with Chinese characteristics is also fitting the theories of functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics. A Chinese Manner category will be sketched in this paper. The theory of Semantics grammar and Cognitive grammar are used in this paper.In a word, the main achievements in this paper are as follows:(1) This is the first time that the manner category is studied systemic and roundly. We have found manner category is a prototype category. Manner category is made up of argument category and semantic role category. We discriminate manner category, instrument category and material category from meaning and form.(2) Based on the theory of prototype -based category, we study the features of typical manner category member and non-typical manner category member and discuss degree hierarchy of the typic member and un-typical.(3) We have divided manner category into causative manner and non-causative manner, causative manner is divided into intentional causative manner and non-intentional causative manner according to the relationship of manner category and Vp. We have divided manner category into control manner and non-control manner. So we set up the semantic system of manner category for the first time and deepened the knowledge of the manner category.(4) This paper analyzes rhemization and topicaliczation's restrictions of manner case. According to this, manner case is divided into common manner and occasional manner.(5) The verb in modern Chinese is classified two parts 'manner-verb' and 'no manner-verb' according to the ability of combing manner case in this paper, then manner-verb is classified two parts 'absolute manner-verb' and 'relative manner-verb' according to combing different manner case.(6) We found the nouns of manner object are sub-basic level category word.(7) We found manner preposition have four sub-meaning, which is "shiyong"(使用), "pingjie"(凭借), yiju(依据) and "biaoxian"(表现).This article not only verifies theoretically effectiveness of semantic category, but also testify the research thinking of "beginning with grammatical meaning research to explore grammar form". The achievements of the article are helpful to computer natural language processing and the teaching of Chinese as a second language.