Demonstrative-classifier Positioning in Chinese Relative Clauses:A Discourse-pragmatic Study
A Chinese relative clause(RC)can either immediately precede the head NP,or be separated from its head by a demonstrative-classifier sequence(DCL).The word order variation results in two nominal constructions:the inner modifier nominal(IMN)with the DCL+RC+NP order and the outer modifier nominal(OMN)with the RC+DCL+NP order.From a discourse-pragmatic perspective,this paper explores the conditioning factors that influence the variation of the two constructions in discourse.Examinations of the structures and distribution of the constructions show that they are deployed in discourse to carry out different discourse purposes.The IMN has a strong association with the subject RCs containing intransitive verbs or inanimate nouns.The RC in IMN function as informative RC with the head noun salient in discourse.By contrast,the OMN appears more frequently with the object RC containing an animate noun.The RC in OMN serves the discourse function of anchoring,and the discourse salience of the noun contained in the RC is comparatively higher than that of the head noun.According to the discourse salience of nouns in the relative constructions,IMN and OMN demonstrate different information structures:the head noun has higher salience in IMN,while in OMN,the noun in the RC has higher discourse salience.Moreover,the different information packaging models influence the semantic orientation and syntactic representation of IMN and OMN.Finally,identifiability can account for the difference of information packaging models in IMN and OMN,as it exerts significant influence on word order variation in Chinese modifiers.
relative clausedemonstrative-classifierword orderdiscourse function
万方数据
维普
