The Different Prosodic Effect Of Attributive Mark "De" And "Zhi"

Attributive mark "De" and "Zhi" both are structural particles which are used frequently in Chinese. The former’s basic function is used as a connector between the attributive and the central word in modern Chinese phrase. And the latter has the same function, but it’s a classical structural particle of ancient Chinese. Although "De" and "Zhi" have the same grammatical function, they still vary greatly. The two work in complementary ways in the same syntax environment——the pre-attached particle "De" is freely used in all kinds of styles, which is always followed by disyllabic central word; the post-attached particle "Zhi" is limitedly used in writing language, which is always followed by monosyllabic central word. At the same time, there both exists bracketing paradox in "De" phrase and "Zhi" phrase, which means the syntactic structure isn’t in accordance with the phonetic structure. Based on precedent studies and considerable corpora of CCL, the thesis compares the attributive mark "De" and "Zhi", aiming at revealing the existence of bracketing paradox between syntactic structure and phonetic structure, and the different prosodic effects caused by different attached direction and register. At last, I try to apply theories of the Chinese prosodic syntax to explain these linguistic phenomena. This thesis is divided into four chapters:The first chapter is the introduction of the paper. It mainly introduces the contents, the significances, current situation and the study methods of this paper.In the second chapter, I mainly summarize the prior combinations of attributive mark "De" and disyllabic central word, which include the situations that the central word is a solidification word or modified by an attributive. Besides, I also consider the combinations like free or limited group "De+monosyllabic central word","De+polysyllabic proper noun phrase" and "De+idiom". At last, I try to reveal there exists bracketing paradox in "De" phrase.The third chapter mainly researches the prior combinations of attributive mark "Zhi" and monosyllabic central word, which include the situations that nonstandard four-character phrase made up of "Zhi" and different layers of the lexicalization of "Zhi X". Besides, I also consider the combinations like "Zhi+disyllabic central word",and "Zhi+polysyllabic central word" during classical Chinese transforming to modern Chinese. At last, I try to reveal there exists bracketing paradox in "Zhi" phrase.Based on the linguistic phenomena described before, the last chapter tries to reveal the fact that different attached directions of attributive mark "De" and "Zhi" leads to different prosodic structure——"De" is pre-attached in phonetic structure but post-attached in syntactic structure; however, the situation of "Zhi" is just on the contrary Due to the different attached direction and register,"De" is always followed by disyllabic central word and "Zhi" is often followed by monosyllabic central word. And then, I discuss about the different pragmatic value of "De" and "Zhi" when they are exchanged in the same prosodic environment.