| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 語言學研究所 === 101 === This thesis discusses the properties of the Chinese degree adverbs, man and tai. Gradability is the typical property of gradable adjectives. In Mandarin Chinese, when gradable adjectives function as predicates, degree adverbs must appear. Many scholars study the commonest Chinese degree adverb hen. However, there are few literatures discussing other degree adverbs. In Chinese, some of degree adverbs accompany sentence-final particles, including man and tai. There two adverbs co-occur with particle de and le respectively. I argue that the distinction between different degree adverbs is not restricted to expressing different degree values. The semantic and syntactic differences make the degree adverbs have different distributions and accompany different sentence-final particles. In the thesis, first, I describe the distributions of the two degree adverbs. I find the degree adverb man generally does not appear in negation scope, questions and conditional clauses. As for the degree adverb tai, because of its semantics, its use has some restrictions in some modalities, result clauses and concession clauses. Then, I propose my analysis. According to Ernst’s (2009) criteria, I argue that the degree adverb man is a positive polarity item. It cannot appear in non-veridical environments, and its subjectivity causes the occurrence of the particle de. On the other hand, the use of the degree adverb tai implies the adjectives contain a maximal value. When no maximal exists, the use of the degree adverb tai is infelicitous. Moreover, the particle le in the tai construction indicates that the proposition is contrary to speakers’ expectation, and it can function as a speech-act operator making declaratives express exclamation.
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