Comparative Study On Interrogative Sentence Of Chinese And Korean

As Lu Shuxiang states in Essentials of Chinese Grammar, "The interrogative mood is a general term covering doubting and questioning, which don’t have exactly the same range." Interrogative sentences comprise two aspects of doubting and questioning; the former is about content, the latter form. Interrogative sentences in Chinese and Korean, besides expressing doubt, are capable of expressing various meanings, e.g. command, statement, speculation, etc. Therefore, interrogative sentences have characteristics in morphology and content distinct from other types of sentences. It is for this reason that there have been active research on interrogatives of Chinese and Korean. Comparative studies have found that interrogative sentences with the same form in Chinese and Korean may express different meanings, and interrogatives expressing the same meaning may adopt different forms. Thus it is of considerable significance to conduct comparative studies on the expressions of Chinese and Korean interrogative sentences for learners of Korean whose native tongue is Chinese.Based on existing studies, this dissertation studies from various prospects the types and methods of the realization of Chinese and Korean interrogative sentences, with evidence from grammar books, novels, TV dramas and particular focus on the realization of grammatical category. The present study first conducts a statistical study on language data of Chinese and Korean oral utterances, summarizes the realization types of interrogative sentences and the realization methods of the category of interrogative mood, and compares the basic forms of interrogative sentences between Chinese and Korean. Then it analyses the various meanings expressed by interrogative sentences from the prospect of semantics, and studies the similarities and differences between Chinese and Korean in terms of the expressions of interrogatives. Besides, this study also addresses linguistic phenomena via pragmatics which are hard to account for by syntax and semantics. The new viewpoints and new methods this study has to offer are listed as follows:1. Re-establishment of concepts and expression the author’s opinions. As Chinese and Korean have different definitions of interrogative sentence, this study proposes its own view based on existing definitions and the tripartite division of doubting, questioning and answering, and puts forward the classification of interrogative sentences suitable for Chinese-Korean comparative study on the premise of distinction between form and meaning. This paper doesn’t adopt the concept "Wh-question", but systematically analyses various meanings expressed by interrogative sentences.2. Statistical analysis of realization types and methods of Chinese-Korean interrogative sentences based on realization method of grammatical category. This paper puts forward interrogative types of Chinese:a. [-mood marker], b. interrogator, c. selective interrogative "...还是...", d. "X 不 X? " and e. incomplete interrogative sentences; interrogative types of Korean:a. interrogative ending, b. shared ending, c. declarative ending, imperative ending, inducement ending, etc, d. connective ending and e. incomplete sentences. According to statistics, the most common interrogative is realized by [-mood marker] in Chinese and shared ending in Korean. In terms of realization methods of grammatical category, Chinese realizes grammatical category by phonology, lexis and syntax, while Korean by phonology, morphology and lexis. Also according to statistics, there is a marked difference between [-interrogator] and [+interrogator], but it doesn’t make much difference in Korean whether there is explicit interrogators.3. Analyzing method based on semantics. Existing Chinese-Korean comparative studies are usually based on form, whereas this paper is totally predicated on semantics in analyzing the similarities and differences between the two languages. For example, negative interrogative "(?)" is generally regarded as confirmative interrogative; in this paper, however, it is taken as realizing declarative meaning, and a comparison is drawn with Chinese.4. Diversity of semantic research of interrogatives. Existing studies on interrogative sentences are mainly centered on rhetorical questions, while this paper classifies interrogative meaning into basic meaning and non-interrogative meaning, and compares their respective expressions, including declarative interrogative expressing [+declarative], confirmative and speculative interrogative for [-declarative], imperative interrogative for [+imperative], requisitive interrogative for [-imperative], and exclamative interrogative for expressing strong exclamation.