A Comparative Study Of The Modal Adverb "Weishi" And "Zhuoshi"

This article examines the formation,chronological evolution and common distribution of the modern Chinese adverbs"Weishi"and"Zhuoshi",and compares and contrasts the similarities and differences in the use of the two words.At the chronological level,the historical origins of the terms"Weishi"and"Zhuoshi"are examined,as well as the process of their lexicalisation and grammaticalisation and their motivations.At the diachronic level,the syntactic,semantic and pragmatic aspects of the terms are analysed in a wide range of ways.The paper consists of four chapters.The first introductory chapter gives an account of the rationale for the topic,a detailed overview of the current state of research on tone adverbs,an examination of the state of scholarly research on these two words from both a diachronic and a chronological perspective,and an account of the sources of the corpus.Chapter 2 examines the chronological evolution of the words"Weishi"and"Zhuoshi".The semantic development of"Weishi"and"Zhuoshi"is sorted out separately,with"Weishi"being formed from the monosyllabic real words"Wei"and"Shi"respectively.and"solid"are grammaticalized into adverbs,combined into parallel phrases,and then lexicalized from parallel phrases into tone adverbs;"to be solid"evolves from a verbal phrase through a metaphorical mechanism into a modal adverb,and then from a modal adverb into a tone adverb.This is used as a basis for exploring the dynamics of their grammaticalisation and lexicalisation.Chapter 3 compares the syntactic differences between"Weishi"and"Zhuoshi".It is found that they have restrictions on the object and complement when used with action verbs and aorist verbs;when used with adverbs of degree,"Zhuoshi"can be used with the higher relative degree adverb’Geng’,but not with other relative When co-occurring with adverbs of tone and end-of-sentence tone,"Zhuoshi"cannot co-occur with"Gantanlei",and"Zhuoshi"is used more frequently than It is more frequently used than"Weishi",but"Weishi"can be used with"ba₁",which is a measure,but not"Zhuoshi".Chapter 4 presents a quantitative analysis of the discourse of"Weishi"and"Zhuoshi",and finds that both in the spoken（microblogging）and written（press,science and technology,literature）discourse.It is found that the use of"Zhuoshi"is much more frequent than that of"Weishi",both in spoken and written language（Weibo）.