ADiscourse-Functional Study Of Relative Clauses

This dissertation studies the relative clauses in written Chinese narrative. From afunctionalist view of grammar, and a discourse-functional perspective in particular,the author examines the validity of the existing typological hypotheses with Chineselanguage, and then explores the patterns of relative clauses in Chinese by payingspecial attention to the characteristics of Chinese language itself.The relative clause, notorious for its complex structure, has become an importanttopic in linguistic studies and has been discussed from various perspectives. However,the term “relative clause” was seldom mentioned in traditional Chinese linguisticstudies. Instead, the linguistic phenomena covered by relative clauses were usuallyviewed as a subtype of attributive structure, a NP formed by adding a complicatedmodifier to a noun. It is not until the1980s when typology began to be introduced intoChina that this structure is reexamined, leading to the establishment of the notion of“relative clause” in Chinese language.In this sense,“relative clause” is a notion originated from Indo-Europeanlanguages. Therefore, a problem that has to be addressed is how to conduct similartypological studies on Chinese relative clauses within the Chinese grammaticalsystem. The domestic studies on this topic are mostly discussions which view thistype of structures as phrases rather than clauses, and more attention has been paid tothe formal aspect rather than the functional perspective. The studies of Chineserelative clauses by foreign researchers are usually contrastive studies in which theresults from Chinese data is compared with the results from western languages, anddo not help much to the systematic and theoretical studies of Chinese relative clausesitself. A sketch of the current studying situation on Chinese relative clauses seems toindicate that approaching the Chinese relative clauses from the discourse-functionalperspective might shed more lights on this topic.The present research includes two parts:(1) the examination of existingtypological hypothesis with the data obtained from Chinese relative clauses;(2) a systematic study of the Chinese relative clauses which accords with the characteristicsof Chinese language in general.The typological hypotheses that are examined with the data obtained fromChinese relative clauses include:(1) AH Hypothesis and Absolutive Hypothesis.AH Hypothesis is the most influential theory in the study of relativization, and hasbeen placed under extensive tests as well as into various applications in fields of bothfirst and second language acquisition. The Absolutive Hypothesis is believed to haveequally strong interpretive power in many cross-language studies. The two hypothesesare examined with Chinese relative clauses and are analyzed from the perspective ofpredicative power. The result from frequency statistics shows that AH Hypothesis andAbsolutive Hypothesis are not incompatible because both are supported by our datafrom written Chinese relative clauses. However, comparatively speaking, AbsolutiveHypothesis provides a better framework than the AH Hypothesis to account for theusage of Chinese relative clauses.(2) the Hypothesis of preferred argument structure.This theory stresses the dynamic relationship between grammar and discourse. Itspredicative power is best observed in situations where information load is heavy.Therefore, our choice of the written narrative as the language data seems to beappropriate and the relativization does not interrupt the “preferred argument structure”.The result demonstrates that in Chinese relative clauses, S-RC and O-RC basicallyobserve the PAS constraint, while A-RC does not. This again points to the influence ofgenre difference on grammatical relationship.The second part attempts at a systematic study of the Chinese relative clauseswhich accords with the characteristics of Chinese language. This includes:(1) ananalysis of the predicate types of relative clauses and their argument distribution.Beginning with the classification of different predicate types, the author introducesthe notion of stage-level predicate and individual-level predicate, and proposes thesyntactic criteria for recognizing adjectives as relative clauses. Then the syntactic,semantic and distributional features of relative clauses with different types ofpredicates are discussed. A tentative interpretation from the perspective of discoursefunction is also provided so that it will offer factual basis for circumscribing the Chinese relative clauses.(2) The referential types and discourse function of Chineserelative clauses. Different from most existing researches which discuss the referentialtype of head nouns in terms of “definite vs. indefinite” contrast, the authordistinguishes three types (individual, generic and non-referential type), and discussesthe differences of their corresponding relative clauses in terms of semantic attributesand discourse function, so that the related grammatical phenomena can beappropriately explained. Our research shows that individual-referential relativeclauses mainly serve the narrative function, while generic and non-referential relativeclauses mainly serve the descriptive function. Therefore, foregrounding is realized asthe individual referential relative clauses (which is also a proof that Chinese relativeclauses can also be used for foregrounding).With regard to their roles in main clauses,all the three types of relative clauses appear mainly in the object positions.(3)Thediscourse-functional study of the distribution of deictic, quantitative and classifiermarkers (DQC markers) in relative clauses. The study focuses on the presence andabsence of DQC markers that modify the head NP, and their word order variation(before or after the relative clauses) and the distribution of different subcategories.Our data support the foregrounding hypothesis of DQC markers. The DQC markerstend to precede the relative clause. The word order variation is to a certain extentinfluenced by the syntactic roles of the relativized NPs and the discourse function ofrelative clauses. Our research also demonstrates that the animacy of the head NPs, theinformation status of the head NPs, as well as discourse salience do not influence theword variation of DQC markers. Besides, the distribution patterns of deictic classifiermarkers and the distribution patterns of quantitative classifier markers are alsodifferent. Among the DQC markers, yi (one)+classifier has the widest distribution,and the occurrence of na (there) is more frequent than zhe (here).These show that theusage of DQC markers is not determined by factors at the grammatical or semanticlevel, but rather the factors at the discourse level.The whole dissertation sticks to the principle that grammar should be studied inrelation to factors in discourse and genre. Guided by the functionalist approach andthe notions of discourse grammar in particular, the present research stresses the importance of studying grammar in real discourses, and aims at finding out thediscourse motivations behind grammatical phenomena. We endorse the idea that anaccount of grammatical phenomena should be given on the basis of analyzing factorsat discourse level, and that grammatical study should center around some specificgenre and have it as the basis of analysis. The grammatical rules thus obtained are therules that ground on that genre. This dissertation is based on the written Chinesenarrative, and therefore the findings are but the manifestation and rules of the Chineselanguage in this genre. Though limited within this genre alone, the exploration is stilla useful attempt in the systematic study of Chinese relative clauses in general.