Research On The Evidentiality Of Modern Chinese

This thesis probes into the evidentiality of modern Chinese. On the basis of fully observing modern Chinese language facts, after the evidentiality being defined and classified, the content and nature of evidentiality, the relationship between evidentiality and modality is re-surveyed and discussed, the close relationship between evidentiality and deixis, negation, context is discussed, then, the expression of evidentiality of modern Chinese is investigated, the rank and the typicality of evidentiality is analysed theoretically and throughly, meanwhile, the expressions of evidentials in Mandarin is discussed.The first chapter is the introduction. It accounts for the research object and scope, the research significance, the research methods and the theoretical background.The second chapter first states the current research and development of evidentiality at home and abroad. Based on it, we discuss the definition of evidentiality, and describe the expression of evidentiality of Chinese and foreign language. Then, from "independent of each other", "evidentiality including modality", "modality including evidentiality", "crossing each other" this four aspects, we discuss the relationship between evidentiality and modality. What's more, we analyse the relationship between deictic and the expression of evidentiality, negation and the expression of evidentiality.The third chapter puts the expression of evidentiality of modern Chinese into four types:perception, speculation, hearsay and zero-evidential. The first type belongs to the direct evidence, and the last three types provide the source of indirect evidence. Either the direct evidential or the indirect evidential, they are all used frequently in our daily life.The fourth chapter discusses the rank problems of evidentiality based on Givon's reliability rank of evidence. We believe that using of different evidentials would mean different rank of evidentiality, zero-evidential can also give us communicate information, sometimes they are even more credible than general evidentials. At the same time, the rank of evidentiality under the influence of context is very big, we must base on the specific context, and then discuss the rank of evidentiality. In addition, this chapter also compares the reliability rank of evidentiality between zero-evidential and general evidentials.The fifth chapter, using the method of comparison, we analyze the "KAN LAI"(看来)and "KAN QI LAI"(看起来), "KAN SHANG QU"(看上去) and "KAN QI LAI"(看起来), "KAN ZHE"(看着) and "KAN QI LAI"(看起来), FANG FU"(仿佛),"SI HU"(似乎)and "HAO XIANG"(好像),they are the typical expression of evidentiality of modern Chinese.Chapter 6 is the conclusion, summarizes the main ideas of the thesis.