A Semantic, Discourse, and Pragmatic Analysis of Mandarin Adverb Zai

• Main Author: 陳冠婷
• Other Authors: 陳俊光
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/15823659364355296767

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 華語文教學研究所 === 100 === As a high-frequency adverb in modern Chinese, Zai is often compared with three other adverbs: Hai（還）, Y（也）, and You（又）. However, contrast to these three adverbs, we can not find any thesis focusing on Zai in the recent ten years in Taiwan. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to make a comprehensive study for Zai, including semantic, discourse, and pragmatic three aspects. In the respect of semantics, in order to discuss the polysemy phenomenon of Zai, we clarify various meanings of Zai based on diachronic semantics, previous research, and data in corpura. Then by means of analysis and statistics, we learn that the core meaning of Zai is “again”; and we further discuss its relationship with other meanings. In the respect of discourse, the connection between the aforesaid item and consequent item of Zai can be “succeeding sequence” or “coexistent addition”. And from the perspective of information structure, Zai has the function of foreground, which can help following actions to move on. Furthermore, we also find out that when the function of Zai is “coexistent addition”, it can usually be omitted and transform into a discourse marker. And in the respect of pragmatics, when Zai’s semantic presupposition combines with context, it turns into pragmatic presupposition, making the communication smoothly. Zai can also convey different pragmatic effects while being in conjunction with negative or subjunctive sentences, and interrogative or imperative sentences respectively. Moreover, Zai can express the effect of postponing in time. Finally, we make an overview of four main current Mandarin pedagogical materials, and provide some suggestions for teaching Zai. At the same time, according to pedagogical grammar theory and the result of our study, we offer some advice on Zai’s pedagogical grammar sequence and design some exercise samples as well.