A study of the antithetical four-character form in modern Chinese language = Xian dai Han yu dui ju si zi ge yan jiu

Abstract

Antithesis is commonly observed in both Chinese language and literature and plays a significant part of Chinese culture. In the field of modern Chinese language, the Antithetical Four-Character Form witnesses the cultural tradition of antithesis. This thesis, therefore, focuses on a large numbers of Antithetical Four-Character Forms (AFCF) and attempts to explore various linguistic aspects including semantics, grammar and pragmatics of this unique phenomenon in Modern Chinese.

This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction, which traces the tradition of antithesis in Chinese culture, defines the concept of “Four-Character Form”, and reviews previous research relevant to this topic. Sources of examples, research methodology and related linguistic theories are clarified in this chapter as well.

The sematic feature of AFCF is investigated in Chapter Two. As the elementary feature, antithesis is firstly discussed from a comparative perspective with the concept of antonym. Through discussion, these two concepts, antithesis and antonym, are explicitly defined and their relations and differences are therefore clearly presented. Antithetical morphemes in AFCF are then divided into Explicit Antithetical Morpheme and Implicit Antithetical Morpheme, according to whether they have the corresponding two-syllable compound or not. Afterwards, a cognitive methodology is applied in terms of semantic changes within AFCF. Both metaphor and metonymy are widely observed in AFCF at the level not only of single morpheme but also of the complete form. Based on specific analysis on each AFCF example in terms of metaphor and metonymy, the vividness of AFCF is evaluated with a scored system.

Chapter Three focuses on the grammatical features of AFCF. To discover whether AFCF belongs to the concept of “word” or “phrase”, previous dispute is firstly reviewed and the concept of “word” is then redefined. According the newly raised principle to differentiate “word” and“phrase”, which is closely related to sematic features, AFCF examples are divided into two grammatical groups. In addition, as AFCF is viewed as the Compound Prosodic Word from the theory of Prosodic Morphology, a new prosodic method is also provided to decide the grammatical property of AFCF. This chapter also has a deep look at the grammatical structure and the role of AFCF and finds that the joint structure is most commonly seen among AFCF. Within the sematic units of each AFCF, several structures, including Subject-Verb, Verb-Object, Modifier-Core and Verb-Complement, can be observed. As for the grammatical role, AFCF can be used as various components within a sentence.

In Chapter Four, the pragmatic features of AFCF is discussed. AFCF examples appear to have different styles, informal style, formal style and elevated style. Several factors which have impact on the style of AFCF are discovered, including stress pattern, repetition of the first morpheme and the style of each single morpheme. Variant of existing AFCF as well as newly-created AFCF in different methods are also discussed in this chapter.

The closing chapter draws conclusions from the previous chapters, clarifies the significance of this research and points out some further topics to be discussed.