Semantic Subjectivity With Two Adversativity-Denoting Items In Mandarin Chinese

With the rise of cognitive linguistics,functional linguistics,and pragmatics,the“subjectivity” of language has gradually attracted scholars’ attention.Subjectivity is a ubiquitous phenomenon that exists in human language.The research on subjectivity in Chinese linguistics circles has a long history,the focus of which is mainly on the level of specific vocabularies and constructions.Some Chinese scholars have noticed the subjectivity features in the semantics of certain adversative words and explored their differences.In Chinese,danshi and keshi,both being able to function as adversative conjunctions,apparently have the same meaning and can be used interchangeably in most cases.But according to some previous studies,there are differences concerning the use of the two adversity-denoting items.Specifically,it is claimed that danshi is more objectively related than other words like qishi ‘in fact’.Moreover,it is proposed that danshi is more likely to be used in written language,while keshi is used more frequently in spoken language.Based on previous research,this thesis attempts to summarize the subjective meanings of the two adversative conjunctions and to demonstrate that keshi is more subjectively related than danshi.To prove the latter point,the research conducts a corpus-based study of the two words under discussion in their degree of subjectivity.The data utilized in the study is chiefly taken from the CCL corpus(provided by the Center for Chinese Linguistics in Peking University)and they fall in four types: Chinese academic literary corpus(CWAC),interviews in the spoken language,news,and novels.One characteristic of the data used in the study is that sufficient attention is paid not only to spoken language,but to written language as well.This is meant to compensate for the deficiency of previous studies that have mainly focused on spoken language data.The main findings are as follows:Firstly,it is summed up in the thesis that in Modern Chinese,danshi and keshi can be used to fulfil four types of functions related to subjectivity,i.e.,perspective presentation,emphasis-laying,counter-expectation articulation,and mood adjustment.These four functions serve as the semantic and pragmatic ground on which to compare the two words in question in their degree of subjectivity.Secondly,the two conjunctions in point do differ in their degree of subjectivity.This is confirmed along three dimensions statistically speaking.To begin with,in terms of the co-occurrence patterns,it is found that keshi transpires in conjunction with certain subjectivity indicators with a prominently higher frequency than danshi.The subjectivity indicators include not only some lexical forms denoting subjectivity,but also certain grammatical items like mood particles and even certain sentence-ending punctuations.For another thing,with regard to the three domains as proposed by Sweetser(1990),the content domain exhibits the least degree of subjectivity,whereas the epistemic and the conative speech act domains are more subjectively related than the content domain.The statistical analysis manifests a significant difference between the use of danshi and keshi in relation to the three domains.In general terms,danshi is used more frequently than keshi in the content domain.In contrast,keshi displays a stronger tendency to be interpreted within the epistemic and the conative speech act domains,which implies that keshi is associated with a higher degree of subjectivity.Finally,the subjective usage of keshi is highly noticeable in all the four genres of discourse mentioned above;that is,it co-occurs with more subjective items and is used more frequently in more subjectively-related domains in academic articles,news,interviews and novels.Finally,the research undertakes a tentative exploration into the potential causes leading to the varying degrees of subjectivity characterizing the two items under discussion.We first trace the etymology of dan and ke,respectively the initial constituent in the two conjunction words.It is suggested that dan once underwent a categorial shift from a verb to an adverb.The primary function of dan ‘but’ in this case was to restrict in quantification the verb or the verb phrase it modifies,which has little to do with subjectivity.On the other hand,ke in ke-shi used to and continues to express a kind of modality,including epistemic modality,which is inherently a subjectivity meaning.Secondly,although in the process of grammaticalization,danshi has been transformed from a restrictive adverb into an adversative conjunction,the time when it took on the speaker-related subjectivity meaning is later than keshi given the CCL corpus surveyed.Besides,keshi manifested more types of subjective meanings in grammaticalization,such as questioning and emphasizing,and these meanings are still preserved in Modern Chinese,which indicates that keshi is more subjectively associated.