A Contrastive And Analytic Study On The Application Of Modal Auxiliary Verbs In English And In Chinese

Modal auxiliary verbs indicate different types of modality. The study of them has long been a major focus of interest for both foreign and Chinese linguists. However, their starting point was either only based on English or only based on Chinese. Few scholars did such a research as contrastive and analytic study of the application of modals in both English and in Chinese. Based on Halliday's functional grammar, this thesis makes a contrastive analysis of modals in both English and in Chinese. The examples and data are cited from Best Prose 108 Pieces translated both in English and in Chinese.First the history of the research on modals in English and in Chinese is traced back to; in Part One, both English and Chinese modals are classified into such semantic categories as volition, probability, and necessity in which their constructures are analysed respectively, here the forms are combined with their meanings. In Part Two, the semantic categories are subclassified in detail, and it is noticed that the difficult point lies in understanding the notions of possibility and necessity, since both can be divided into epistemic, deontic modality and the one between the two. In Part Three, the function is explained in the light of negation, inversion, code and emphatic affirmation features, but in Chinese, the patterns of negation are much more complex than in English, and as for inversion, Chinese epistemic modals except 会hui 'future-predicate' canprecede the subject of a sentence.The reason is that this kind of modal has the whole sentence as its argument, but according to tradditional Chinese grammar, modals can't precede the subject. In Part Four, a statistical analysis on modals in both languages is made; in the end, a conclusion is reached:1. There exists a close set of modal auxiliary verbs in both English and Chinese. There exists positive linear correlation between English modals and Chinese modals but differences are more than similarities.2. The polysemy of modals is a prominent characteristic both in English and in Chinese. But one thing is true: each modal auxiliary verbs has a basic meaning which is the denominator of the modal auxiliary verb.