A Research On The Syntactic And Semantic Attributes And Asymmetric Characteristics Of Measurable Adjective "Big" And "Small"

In the contemporary Chinese,"da" and "xiao" are a couple of measurable adjectives with opposite meaning. However, there are asymmetic stuations between them. So we don’t have corresponding expression for "ni you duo da"、"da hai""xiao shui yi hui". Now, researchs about "da" and "xiao" are in lack of detailed systematic analysis on syntactic and semantic attributes. Also investigation on their asymmetic phenomenons are not yet comprehensive and detailed. The motivated explanation to these phenomenons are limited on the internal semantic or the external cultural dimentions of linguistics.This thesis will try to give systematic discription and explain it furtherly about "da" and "xiao" based on the previous researches.The first chapter is introduction. It refers to the researching area、purpose and significance of choosing this topic. It sums up the research results of previous ones and points out the problems to be solved in the existing researches.The second chapter describes the semantic features. It illustrates their basic and metaphorical meaning to prove out the their spatial metaphor access.The third chapter will investigate on "da" and "xiao" from muti-angles on the syntatic fuction.The fourth chapter focuses on the asymmetic phenomenon of "da" and "xiao" specifically from the dimentions of word-building capacity、collocation and syntatic distribution.The fifth chapter will explain the further reasons in both ways of internal linguistic system and cognitive.The sixth chapter will sum up the main perspectives of this paper and illustrate the qustions need to be researched futhermore.