Research On Distribution And Function Of “Shuo Qilai(说起来)”

This paper is based on full language materials widely, adopted a combination of description and interpretation research method to make a comprehensive and detailed study on the distribution and semantic function of “Shuo qilai” in modern Chinese. Remove the introduction and conclusion, this paper is divided into three chapters as follows.The first chapter described the distribution status of “Shuo qilai” when it acts as syntax components such as predicates, adverbial modifiers and topics etc., and also analyzed its corresponding semantic function. When acting as affiliated predicates, “Shuo qilai” has two kinds of expression meanings of “situation” and “process”; when as adverbial modifiers, “Shuo qilai” has three kind of usages, such as “mention” meaning, “traceability” meaning and “scrutiny” meaning; when as topics, “Shuoqilai” can be divided into modifier topics and thematic topics.The second chapter analyzed the concrete situation of “Shuo qilai” as a discourse marker(including discourse perspective marks and discourse connection marks). When as discourse perspective marks, “Shuo qilai” has two main expression functions: one is narrative summary perspective mark; other is representation perspective mark. When acting as discourse connection marks, “Shuo qilai” has two connection modes of “topic continuity connection” and “topic transformation connection”.The third chapter discussed the semantic function system and formation mechanism of “Shuo qilai”. Due to changes of cognitive perspective of saying process, “Shuo qilai” forms several usages and meanings of “continued beginning”, “process”, “result”, “orientation” and “topic”. Based on these meanings, and under the metaphor mechanism, it as well as form further meanings of “traceability” and “scrutiny”; and under the metonymic mechanism, it also forms the derivation functions of narrative summary perspective mark and obverse perspective mark; finally, because of the factors of front position of sentence header, the topic property of “Shuo qilai” and preference of “Qilai”, “Shuo qilai” produces the function of discourse connection mark.