The Animacy Of Chinese Noun

Based on the research of animacy in language universals and linguistic typology, this paper analyzes the animacy of noun of Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages. It mainly discusses the animate noun of Chinese and the corresponding linguistic phenomena dominated by animacy. This paper adopts three methodology—X-bar theory and 8-theory of Transformational and Generative Grammar, topic and focus theory of Contemporary Pragmatics and linguistic subjectivity and subjectivisation of Cognitive Grammar—to investigate the animacy of noun in Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages from various angles namely control, power, semantic roles, definiteness, referential & exclusive & abstract property, topic and subjectivity, number as well as popularity. Ultimately this paper draws the conclusion of the hierarchy of animate noun and explains the consequence of syntax out of high and low animacy.This paper is divided into five parts. The first part defines the fundamental conception of animacy and summarizes the research on animacy which is carried out at home and abroad. Besides it sums up the linguistic theories which are used in this paper. They are X-bar theory and 0-theory of Transformational and Generative Grammar, topic and focus theory of Contemporary Pragmatics and linguistic subjectivity and subjectivisation of Cognitive Grammar.The second part brings forward the questions and points out the linguistic phenomena out of high and low animacy in Chinese.The third part discusses the objective animacy represented in languages and concludes the rough hierarchy of animate noun. The lexical representations of high and low animacy are also given out generally.The fourth part is the most important one. It discusses the animacy of noun determined by linguistic factors and explains the consequence of syntax out of high and low animacy from various angles namely control, power, semantic roles, definiteness, referential & exclusive & abstract property, topic and subjectivity, number as well as popularity. Firstly, we analyze animate noun from three semantic features of control; secondly, we compare the power of person, organization and location in order to check out their animacy; thirdly, using VP-internal Subject Hypothesis in Transformational and Generative Grammar, we investigate Chinese, Kachin and Hani of Tibeto-Burman languages and give out the animacy hierarchy of semantic roles; fourthly, we discuss the animacy of personal pronoun, referential pronoun, proper noun, general noun and abstract noun; fifthly, topic and subjectivity pay attention to the variation of animacy of noun in the paragraph from pragmatic and cognitive points of view respectively; sixthly, we compare the numerical representation of noun in Chinese and Tibetan and other Tibeto-Burman languages. The conclusion is drawn on the relationship between number and animacy; lastly, the influence of popularity on animacy is pointed out.The fifth part includes conclusion and questions leaving behind. We conclude the hierarchy of animate noun from three aspects namely semantics, syntax and pragmatics. Apart from this, we also reveal some consideration about the research of animacy such as its function on language typology and minority languages. Ultimately, we have noticed that the research of animate noun should be extended to event noun besides entity noun.