Study Of The Sentence Pattern "x可(以)y,但(是)z"

The research results on adversative sentences have been relatively rich,but few of them studied systematically a particular sentence pattern.The sentence pattern “x 可(以)y,但(是)z” is very common in modern Chinese which has a special syntactic relationship and connotation.Therefore,this study attempts to examine the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic aspects of this sentence pattern at the synchronic level and discusses its evolutionary mechanism at the diachronic level,in an attempt to provide a reference for the study of the adversative sentences.Firstly,we restrict the object of this study to the “precondition” and “contrast highlighting” sentences through the transformation analysis and deletion methods and exclude the “supplementary description” and “causal violation” sentences.This paper,focus on the corpus with “non-constrained relations”.Then,this study examine the syntactic features,semantic and pragmatic functions of the sentence pattern.From the perspective of syntactic features,“x” is mainly composed of noun components,“y” is mainly composed of predicate components,and“z” is mainly composed of verb-object or adverbial phrases.The “precondition” type sentence pattern does not belong to the dominant resonant sentence pattern,while the sentence pattern of “contrast highlighting” does.From a semantic point of view,the whole sentence reflects speaker’s subjective sense of “bottom line” and is mostly presented in negative form.In the “precondition” type sentence pattern,“可(以)”assumes the auxiliary verb function of “permit.” In the “contrast highlighting” category,it assumes the auxiliary verb function of “may” or “can”.The compound sentences contain the affirmative word “可(以)” on the surface,but in fact they reflect the subjective attitude of the speakers “non-strong will”,which is related to the low intensity of “可(以)” itself.From the perspective of pragmatic function,the pragmatic function of this sentence pattern can be divided into three sub-categories: “explaining objective phenomena” “expressing personal position” and “making suggestions or requests.” The use of this sentence pattern helps to achieve the “gradient” of the listeners understanding of the speech and induces them to agree with or accept the speakers point of view or instruction.In order to grasp the characteristics of the studied sentences,this study also compare the sentence“x可(以)y,但(是)z”with the related sentence“x不是不可以y,但(是)z.”We find that the syntactic feature of“x不是不可以y,但(是)z”is basically the same as that of“x可(以)y,但(是)z.”However,the number of corpus and variety of grammatical components of“x不是不可以y,但(是)z”are obviously lower,and the sentence pattern of“contrast highlighting”is missing.Only two sub-categories of functions:“explaining objective phenomena”and“making suggestions or requests”exist.It is believed that the lower frequency of“x不是不可以y,但(是)z”is related to the fact that“不是不可以”is semantically more concentrated on the speakers“low degree of subjective will”.Based on all the above discussions,the result indicated that the sentence “x 可(以)y,但(是)z” generally develops in the direction of intersubjectification,which expresses the speaker’s concern for the listener’s “self”,and also reflects the advantages of the setting mechanism of the adversative sentences.The formation paths of sentences are closely related to the context,logical thinking ability,presupposition and“resonance.” The “precondition” and “contrast highlighting” types of sentences belong to two formation paths,but they both meet the requirement of communicative purpose and pragmatic functions.