Categorical Shift Of Chinese Adjective Under Decategorization Theory

The categorical shift or decategorization of Chinese word class has always been a scorching issue in the field of linguistics.As one of important Chinese word classes,the categorical fluidity of Chinese adjective gets much attention as well.At the beginning of last century,influenced by the traditional grammar,scholars mainly concentrate on the static description of this language phenomenon.Few of them explore the underlying causes.With the development of the linguistics,linguists start to explain this phenomenon by virtue of valency grammar,systemic functional grammar,generative grammar,cognitive grammar,taking people’s understandings further.However,there still exist some problems like lack of the explanatory power or just being restrict to one specific aspect.Decategorization theory provides us with a brand new perspective.Based on this theory,this thesis aims to make a relatively comprehensive description towards the categorical shift of Chinese adjective.And according to their semantic,syntactic and discourse functional performance,the features of Chinese adjective decategorization will be concluded.Also,the motivations and working mechanisms behind it will be discussed later.Based on the collected data,this thesis has the following findings: firstly,the characteristics of Chinese adjective decategorization are reflected in three aspects.Semantically,Chinese adjectives lose their meaning of describing the quality or state of things and gain the reference or dynamic meaning.Syntactically,adjectives lose their representative morphological features and partly gain the syntactic distribution features of nouns,verbs or adverbs after decategorization.To elaborate them,these adjectives can be modified by quantifiers,modifiers or take time and aspect markers.As for the discourse function,adjectives realize the function extension in context.They can introduce the participants,report the occurrence of events or modify them.Besides,this thesis analyzes the motivations and working mechanisms of adjective decategorization.The generality of language,the tension between finite linguistic means and infinite new concepts,language economy and dynamic of category are the most critical external driving force.Metonymy and metaphor are the two main mechanisms of adjective decategorization.Metonymy contributes to the microscopic construe process of adjective decategorization.The essence of adjective decategorization is that the cognitive subject,due to the metonymy perspective,can construe and select different profiles in the bases activated by the adjectives.On the macroscopic level,adjective categorical shifts are the result of Metaphor.The comprehensive and systematic research of Chinese adjective decategorization further exemplifies decategorization theory and proves its strong explanatory power.Besides,this study is illuminating in teaching and learning Chinese as a second language.