A Comparative Study Between English And Chinese Mood Systems

The thesis is a comparative study between English and Chinese mood systems. The purpose is to make up for some deficiencies in the stated area. There is also an attempt to put forward a few suggestions for the establishment of modern Chinese mood system.To begin with, the thesis briefly introduces the relevant studies about mood both in English and in Chinese. In the English part, the introduction focuses on the mood system in Halliday's systemic functional grammar. In that grammar, mood system is the principal grammatical system for realizing the interpersonal metafunction. According to Halliday, in an exchange among people, language is supposed to fulfill four basic functions: statement, question, offer and command. These basic functions are closely associated with particular structures in the mood system: the declarative, the interrogative, the imperative and the exclamative. In contrast to that, the studies on Chinese mood have been fairly rich and the understanding of mood has consequently become more individual. The representatives include王力,吕叔湘,高名凯and later ones like胡明扬,贺阳,齐沪扬.王力thinks that mood is the expression of human emotions. The narrow definition of mood given by吕叔湘is closely related to the purposes of use.高名凯suggests that mood should be studied from the perspective of proposition, not restricted to word classes.胡明扬thinks that mood is used to express emotions, attitudes or convey information. After that,贺阳presents us a clearer picture of mood system in Chinese, which consists of three sub-ones: function, judgment and emotion.齐沪扬furthers the studies done by others, and proposes two categories of mood: the functional one and the intentional one.After a review of studies on mood in the two languages, the thesis goes on making the comparison under the general framework of systemic grammar. The comparison includes the three aspects of a system: the entry condition, the options in the system and the realizations. As far as the entry condition for the mood system is concerned, both English mood and Chinese mood are used to realize the interpersonal function. In other words, mood is indispensable to the communication between people. In addition to the four basic speech functions it is supposed to realize, mood also involves the speaker's attitudes to or evaluations of the proposition in the clause. As for the options in mood system, there are greater differences between the two languages. In English, the choices for mood are basically four ones: the declarative, the interrogative, the imperative and the exclamative. In Chinese, however, there is a wider possibility of choices, based on the different descriptions by different researchers. The last aspect of the comparison is conducted from the different levels of language system. At the lexical level, mood in English is mainly realized by the finite verbal operators and modal adjuncts. Differently, the lexical realizations of mood in Chinese are more diverse, including modal particles, auxiliary verbs, modal adverbs and exclamations. At the syntactic level, the realizations of mood in the two languages are compared in the four types of sentences: the declarative sentence, the interrogative sentence, the imperative sentence and the exclamative sentence. It is found that the specific realizations of the four types of sentence are very different in the two languages. What's more, in Chinese, there is a more delicate division of each type of sentence. Finally, the realization of mood is compared at the phonological level. Both English and Chinese tone systems are based on an opposition between the falling and rising pitch. Yet the opposition in English is related to polarity, while in Chinese, it is associated with something known or unknown. Besides, the divisions of tone in the two languages are somewhat different.With the comparison above brought to a close, the thesis begins to concentrate solely on the discussion of the Chinese mood system. It first briefly presents the disagreements among the researchers, and then tries to clear them up. It finds that the various classifications of mood are due to the fact that people define mood in different terms, with different focuses. Some may emphasize the emotional part of mood, others may pay more attention to the attitudes or evaluations conveyed in the mood, while there are still others who have observed all these. To solve this difficult problem, one has to resort to modality. Modality refers to those subjective features entailed in the sentence. It includes such elements as the speaker's attitudes, opinions, emotions or evaluations, etc. To sort out the controversies about mood in Chinese, the term 'modality' has to be introduced into Chinese mood system. With a simple and general introduction of modality in English, the thesis starts to research on modality in Chinese, along with its relation to mood. It is argued that mood in Chinese should also be classified according to the basic speech functions or communicative purposes, which results in four basic types of mood (the declarative, the interrogative, the imperative and the exclamative). The other suggestions or ideas about mood, like attitudes, emotions, opinions, etc. belong to the territory of modality. The thesis then shifts to study some important issues concerning modality, including its sub-types (epistemic modality, deontic modality and emotive modality), modal values (high, median and low) and its realizations.In conclusion, the thesis summarizes the major points expressed in it and puts forward some suggestions for future studies.