현대중국어 ‘是…的’구문의 생성과 사용

Abstract

This study aims to present the generation and use of ‘shi-de’ phrase in Mandarin Chinese. After this study took an overview of traditional researches of ‘shi-de’ phrase, it presented how to generate ‘shi-de’ phrase through insertion of ‘shi’ and ‘de’ and movement of an element to be focalized. First, ‘de’ is to be added at the end of the phrase(or sentence) in order to change ‘an event’ to ‘a state of affair’. Second, ‘shi’ is to be put at the front of the phrase(or sentence). Third, an element should be put at the next of ‘shi’ through movement to be focalized. This study also showed how to express a focus in Mandarin Chinese. There are two types of focus. informational focus and contrastive focus. The former is to put an element with new and most important information at the end of the sentence. The latter is to use ‘shi-de’ phrase to put an emphasis on a particular element which is contrasted to other elements. For instance, to focalize ‘Mary’ in ‘Mary drank wine yesterday’, ‘de’ should be put at the end of the sentence and ‘shi’ at the front of the sentence, as in ‘(shi) Mary drank wine yesterday (de)’, in which ‘Mary’ is in the scope of ‘shi’, focus marker. This contrastive focus sentence presupposes ‘X drank wine yesterday and X can be Tom, July, Susan etc’ and means ‘Only Mary rather than the other participants(Tom, July, Susan etc) drank wine yesterday’. In case of focalizing ‘yesterday’, ‘Mary’ should be out of the scope of ‘shi’ and ‘yesterday’ in the scope of ‘shi’ as in ‘Mary (shi) yesterday drank wine (de)’In conclusion, ‘shi-de’ phrase is composed of the insertion of ‘shi’ and ‘de’ and movement of a particular element to the right side of 'shi' to express a contrastive focus. What is chosen to be focalized is due to the purpose or direction of conversation.