The Subjectivity Study On Qualitative Adjectives In Modern Chinese

Adjectives,as an important part of content words,have always been one of the hot issues in grammar research.This paper mainly focuses on Chinese qualitative adjectives and their degree changes of subjectivity,and examines the syntactic and pragmatic consequences.First of all,this paper establishes subcategories based on the characteristics of qualitative adjectives,and describes corresponding syntactic features of them.According to the standard of "speaker-related" proposed by Traugott(1995),the subjectivity of qualitative adjectives is defined.In this paper,it describes the degree and boundary of the subjectivity of qualitative adjectives from the a continuum point of view.At the same time,syntactically,combined with the pre-attribute order,the number of expressions and the structure of "Bi" sentence,the subjective-objective degrees of qualitative adjectives is judged: The weak subjectivity of qualitative adjectives is shown as being closer to the noun when used as pre-attributives.They also can be combined with specific quantitative phrases to express the objective quantity,and form the sentences of "Bi" with a specific amount of differences.Qualitative adjectives with strong subjective are far from the noun.They can only be combined with blurred phrases to express the subjective quantities.They neither be combined with specific quantitative phrases,nor form the sentences of "Bi" with a specific amount of difference.According to the different degrees of subjective-objective,this article explores the performance of adjectives in terms of word collocation and expressive functions,and proposes a more comprehensive description of their distinguishing features.Through these descriptions and analyses,we can get the following conclusions: First,in terms of collocation:(1)when multiple adjective attributives modify a head noun,the weak subjective adjectives are closer to the head word,and the strong subjective adjectives are outside the head word;(2)The use frequency and amount of "degree adverbs + Bu + adjective" was counted quantitatively.Compared with objective adjectives and negative subjective adjectives,the use frequency of subjective adjectives with positive and neutral meanings was higher.Second,in terms of expression function:(1)When qualitative adjectives with [+measure] objective attributes enter "Duo + adjectives?",it expresses to inquire about the quantity of objects,which can be neutral questions or presupposed questions,while "Duo +subjective adjectives?" is an inquiry into the facts or degree;(2)In terms of comparative composition,qualitative adjectives with [+measure] objective attributes usually constitute pseudo comparative freely,but subjective adjectives constitute true or negative comparisons.Finally,this paper discusses the influencing factors of the subjectivity and dynamic changes of qualitative adjectives during the process of language use,and analyzes the underlying reasons.Language communication is a dynamic process.To some extent,the subjectivity of qualitative adjectives shows dynamic changes,which are generally affected by many factors,such as different attribute subjects,the co-occurrence in the discourse(degree adverbs and subjective discourse markers),and the change of syntactic position.On the one hand,it can be interpreted from the perspective,affect and epistemic modality.One the other hand,the dynamic construal provides a reasonable cognitive basis for the emergence of subjectivity or the change of function caused by different attribute subjects and contexts.