현대중국어의 양상(Modality) 관련 표현에 대한 일 고찰

Abstract

What I discussed in this paper as follows. 1. I do not think that we can establish a grammatical category called 'modality' in modern Chinese. In languages allowing modality as a grammatical category, expressions of modality basically depend on a structure of form or syntax, or a structure of a grammaticalized specific group of words. But this kind of orderly grammatical mark is not observed in the expressions of modern Chinese Mandarin corresponding to expressions of modality. Each grammatical repertory consisting of a grammatical category of each language is not established until it has a certain grammatical mark. If we take a corresponding grammatical item as a category only with a simple correspondence in meaning, not only we cannot rightly establish a grammatical system of each language but also the meaning of a typological research seeing grammatical differences between each language is diluted. 2. In modern Mandarin, the meanings corresponding to the expressions of morality of other languages basically depend on the meanings of individual words, their combinations, and contexts. Any orderly boundary is not found in these words or their combinations when we compare related words in each type. So, to use 'lexical means' indicating a way of expressing modality can cause a misunderstanding that Chinese allows modality. This is why we should be careful when we use this term. 3. Following the traditional way of classification, I classified modality into proposition and event modality. Next, I classified proposition modality into epistemic and evidential modality, and classified event modality into deontic and dynamic modality. In this classification, I found Chinese expressions corresponding to them, took related key words out of them, and analyzed them. The results of analysis were presented in the last of the chapter three. In Chinese, there is no grammatical mark making a distinction between realis and irrealis morality. Also, there is no opposition realis vs irrealis based on a distinction between indicative and subjunctive mode. This research shows, even in the grammatical category of modality, that Chinese as a conceptual language strongly has a character of an isolated language.