Research On The Usage And Grammaticalization Of "Du"

This thesis mainly studies the Chinese adverb "d(?)u".It is conducted via a combination of theoretical approaches and pragmatical approaches.The contemporary usage and the grammaticalization of "d(?)u" are discussed and collated in the thesis via a comprehensive theoretical approach,while 500 pieces of data containing the adverb"d(?)u" are selected from the Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU Corpus of Chinese Texts(abbr.CCL Corpus)and analyzed according to methods of corpus linguistics.The results obtained are to help to check conclusions drawn through theoretical study.This is an innovative perspective for "d(?)u" study.The reasons for writing this thesis are that the boundaries between meanings of "d(?)u" are not clear,that the details of the grammaticalization of "d(?)u" are not precise and that literature which studies "d(?)u" from the perspective of corpus linguistics is not much.The main contents of the thesis are as follows:The thesis starts with the Introduction,in which the subject,the significance and the methodology of the research are explained,and literature review of "d(?)u",of grammaticalization,as well as of the grammaticalization of "d(?)u" is provided.Chapter One mainly discusses the overall status of "d(?)u" in modern Chinese.500 pieces of data containing the adverb "d(?)u" are selected from CCL Corpus,the method of systematic sampling being applied.After statistical treatment of the data,preliminary results show that there are 1.3 "d(?)u" in every texts of a thousand words and that the usage ratio of "d(?)u" to "du" is 8:1.After that,14 modern Chinese sentences are dissected and the following problems are noticed:the boundaries between the meanings of "d(?)u" are sometimes blurry and "d(?)u" as an adverb of tone is more complicated than"d(?)u" as an adverb of range.Chapter Two studies the grammaticalization of "d(?)u" It first discusses how "d(?)u"as an adverb of range is derived from "du" as a noun.It then discusses how "du" as an adverb of range changes into "du" as an adverb of tone."Dou" as an adverb of range first evolves into "d(?)u" as an adverb of tone that reinforces the negative or passive tone in negative sentences;it then evolves into "d(?)u" as an adverb of tone that emphasizes an extreme situation,and then,this "d(?)u" forms the "lian...d(?)u..." structure together with the preposition "lidn".Chapter Three elaborates the current status of "d(?)u" and foresees the possible future of the grammaticalization of it.The current status of the grammaticalization of"d(?)u" is while "d(?)u" as an adverb of range is shifting to "d(?)u" as an adverb of tone,the objective and impartial "d(?)u" as an adverb of range remains to be the principal meaning.One tendency of the grammaticalization of "d(?)u" is to form new words with other words through reanalysis(or lexicalization).One highly possible candidate is the word"shi".Another tendency of the grammaticalization of "d(?)u" is to form fixed structures with other functional words.All statistics obtained from analyzing the 500 pieces of data support the conclusions concluded previously.The content of this chapter might shed some new light on "d(?)u" study.The thesis ends with the Summary.It looks back to the significance of the research in the Introduction to see it achieved,at the mean time it sums up the major conclusions and findings of the thesis.And then it concluded the whole thesis with a chart.