Research On Separate Construction In Contemporary Chinese

Separate construction is a rather common structure in Chinese language, but, compared with the research on other constructions, fewer is done in this respect. This article, based on the theory of three dimensions, combined with functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and the like, probes systematically into the construction from an comprehensive view.Through the investigation into a large quantity of linguistic facts, we find that there are great differences in the interior of this construction including several different sub-categories with distinct formal features. And this is closely related with semantic relation and pragmatic function as well. After describing and then analyzing in detail the semantic relation and various types of separate construction in static viewpoint, the article puts forward feasible explanation from cognitive and semantic perspectives.The article includes five chaptersThe introduction part gives a summary of the achievements made by predecessors, the problems unsolved, the methods to be applied and texts.In chapter one, the author specify the connotation of separate construction and then describe the structural constituents, its syntactic and semantic relation in an overall and detailed way, eventually summarizes the condition for the structure form of separate construction.In chapter two, the author mainly discuss the personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns which are enabled to participate in the structure form in pronoun-referenced type, and further point out that the identifiability and re-reference of pronoun are the main factors which determine its anaphora and cataphora.In chapter three, we differentiate several sub-categories in noun-referenced separate construction. According to the nouns' cohesion way, it can be grouped into quantifier-referenced type, partial-likeness type and interpretative type. Then follow their differences in form and semantic meanings.Chapter four lays emphases on the generating mechanism of separate construction. From the perspective of Figure-Ground theory in cognitive linguistics, combined with Information theory in pragmatics, the author puts forward feasible explanation to the generating of separate construction and moreover points out that the generating is due to movement.In the conclusion, the author summarizes the main idea of the article from static and dynamic view respectively and stresses what should be enforced in the later research.