A Semantic Study Of Modern Chinese Nouns

Based on a review of studies about noun definitions and category classifications in the field of Mandarin, the present thesis proposes a new semantic classification system of nouns. Referring to the system and "the rule of mutual semantic selection" held by Shao Jingmin, the thesis investigates different grammatical forms of nouns.The thesis first makes an investigation into the three semantic features of nouns: space, time and degree by analyzing their causes and their syntactic forms as well as the syntactic functions of nouns, which are determined by the three features.Then, the thesis looks into the syntactic collocation between nouns and that between nouns and different parts of speech. The thesis combines forms and meanings together and gives examples to conclude syntactic structure between nouns and that between nouns and other word classes. Furthermore, it explores the rules for semantic collocation of different kinds of syntactic structure.As a conclusion, the present thesis holds that the syntactic collocation of nouns is subject to "the rule of mutual semantic selection". Categories and the relationships of grammatical structure, i.e., syntactic relationship and semantic relationship, are restricted by the semantic category and semantic feature of nouns of different types.