A Study On The Cohesive Function Of Commentary Adverbs In Modern Chinese

Commentary adverbs are important and hot topics in adverb researches.Compared with descriptive adverbs and restrictive adverbs,they have received more attention from academic circles.However,generally speaking,the previous studies are mostly limited within single sentences,focusing more on the aspects of subjectification,grammaticalization,and modality.The study of the textual cohesive function of commentary adverbs remains relatively poor,as most researches have put emphasis on the scattered individual adverbs and the typical “associative adverbs” in the traditional sense.Therefore there is much work to do for an overall and systematic study of the cohesive function of the commentary adverbs.Based on the previous studies,guided by the functional linguistics thoughts,taking textual linguistics theory as the starting point,rooted in the practical use of modern Chinese adverbs,this dissertation aims at a systematical and thematic analysis of the textual cohesive function of modern Chinese commentary adverbs.It expands the cohesive function of commentary adverbs from a simple sentence level to a complex discourse one.By adopting a combination of synchronic analysis and diachronic investigation,summarization and deductive reasoning,static description and dynamic presentation,the dissertation explores multi-angles of the Chinese commentary adverbs with the textual cohesive function.Besides the introduction and conclusion,there are twelve chapters in this dissertation.The first three chapters discuss the discourse function commentary adverbs in modern Chinese and some relevant phenomena:the defining criteria and scope of the commentary adverbs with cohesive function are determined;the coherence types and cohesion methods of the commentary adverbs are summarized;the third chapter discusses the formation and development of commentary adverbs in the two dimensions,explores the interrelation between the formation of cohesive function of the commentary adverbs and the grammaticalization,interpersonal interaction,and discourse structure.It also predicts its developing trend,which focuses on two aspects: one is how adverbs are different from and associated with conjunctions and discourse markers.The other is the evolutionary mechanism of the cohesive function of commentary adverbs.So that the evolution of the function of commentary adverbs is gradually revealed,and the intrinsic connection and common differences between commentary adverbs and other connective components are dug out.On the basis of the first three chapters,the rest nine chapters focuses on the case study of the nine commentary adverbs,which are zuihao,queshi,sihu,ziran,fan'er,ganqing,fanzheng,zhihao,wuguaihu.The case study covers six types of cohesion,including disjunctive relationships,recovery relationships,conditional relationships,causal relationships,concession relationships,transition relationships,and etc.By comparing with adverbs of similar meanings,the scope of this case study is expanded,and covering another thirteen commentary adverbs: “Chizao,Gaodi,Haodai,Hengshu,Sihuo,Zaowan,Zuoyou,Guanqing,Dangran,Fandao,Wuguai,Nanguai,Guaibude ”.It is hoped that the in-depth study of individual cases will be helpful to deepen the understanding of the first three chapters as a theoretic basis.The adverbs with the cohesive functions in the Chinese language are explored from the perspectives of syntactic distribution and semantic relations,cohesive function and modality function,evolution process and developing trend.At last,the dissertation concludes and summarizes my basic viewpoints and main achievements,and also reflects on the limitations of the research,which paves the way for the follow-up studies.