英文摘要 |
The complementation construction in Chinese, like other grammatical constructions, is shown to be highly heterogeneous, and dominated by a number of lexically specific syntactic patterns and schemas. The construction is also shown to be on a grammaticization path, with mental predicates and their subjects having been largely grammaticized as epistemic or deontic formulas or as lexicalized prefabs. In terms of social actions, parties to a conversation in a data base are shown to consistently perform actions with their turns oriented toward the complement clauses, rather than to the matrix clauses. This is demonstrated by looking at adjacency pairs (rather than isolated sentences) and observing what the participants are trying to do. Finally, based on the distribution pattern of the linker morpheme shuo, an important distinction is seen emerging in spoken Chinese between de dicto and de re complements, with the former marked by the linker shuo, and the latter by its absence. |