A Logical Semantic Analysis Of Chinese “You/Meiyou” Comparative Sentences

Two special sentence patterns which marked by “You/Meiyou” and constituted the “A+You/Meiyou+B+X” comparative sentences in basic structure is relatively common in modern Chinese. A represents a target, B shows the standard, X represents the predicate of comparison. Based on a large number of existed corpus, this article applied the theory and methods of logical semantics to study and analyse the syntax and semantics of these two special sentences in detail.This thesis is divided into seven chapters.The first chapter is an introduction to the research background, research significance and purpose, theory and research methods and the sources of the corpus. The research background includes the research status quo of logical semantics, modern Chinese comparative sentences and the “You/Meiyou” comparative sentences. The significance of this study is to find more semantic features of these two modern Chinese special sentences. In that case, we can develop a new orientation to study the parts of speech of “You” and “Meiyou” in comparative sentences. The purpose is to formalize the modern Chinese “You/Meiyou” comparative sentences by applying logical semantics theories and approaches.The second chapter analyses the modern Chinese comparison category. We presented the concept of “Scale” while borrowed the concept of “Threshold” to explore the sentence meaning of “You/Meiyou” comparative sentences. As a result, we discover that there is a scale plate exists in every individual’s mind which similar to a physical one. It is the Scale on that scale plate that reflected the differences between the target and the standard of a comparative sentence when people express category of comparison. There also exists a Threshold which indicates the varied predicate of comparison.The third and fourth chapter analyse the “You/Meiyou” comparative sentences in natural language including the surface form of language structure, sentence meaning and enterable syntactic elements of the “You/Meiyou” comparative sentences, the syntactic generation and the parts of speech of “you” and “meiyou” in comparative sentences has been involved as well. “You” and “Meiyou” in comparative sentences are light verbs which indicate the comparison category.Chapter five and six, respectively, conducts a logical semantic analysis of the “You/Meiyou” comparative sentences based on the surface form of language structure and its typical example sentences which is derived from chapter three and chapter four. For the “Meiyou” comparative sentences, the situation can be rather intriguing when the target or the standard involveing time expression, because at those times, we have to consider all possibilities including the sequence and the different circumstances when AP, VP or NP act as the predicate of comparison.The seventh chapter is the conclusion. First, we derived a few conclusions from this article. Then we present some unresolved issues and bring forward some plans for future researches.