유형론적 관점으로 본 중국어 사실성부사 ‘真’과 ‘真的’의 기능 확장과 그 범주적 특성

The Development of Categorial Properties of the Actuality Adverbs ‘ZHEN(真)’ and ‘ZHENDE(真的)’ in Chinese and Its Mechanism from Linguistic Typological Perspective

By closely comparing and analyzing the various and complex distributional properties of Chinese actuality adverbs ‘Zhen(真)’ and ‘Zhende(真的)’, this paper tried to prove what categorical functions the actuality adverbs have in addition to their modal meaning and to reveal what mechanism causes the functional extension. First of all, this paper presents a model of the epistemic modality of ‘真’ and ‘真的’, with two distinct worlds, the possible world and the real world. The epistemic modality expresses the speaker’s judgment on the degree to which an event or state established in the possible world matches the real world, and these two adverbs express his strong convictions about the correspondence between the real event and the possible event. Based on this model, it is possible to explain the extension of the degree-intensifying function of ‘Zhen(真)’. The mechanism reveals that the function of emphasizing the degree of a state was developed from cognitive reasoning inferred by the reinforcement of truth of an event or a state. This paper also suggests a new categorical characteristic of ‘Zhen(真)’. The most notable achievement is that we can suggest that ‘Zhen(真)’ has categorical properties such as evidentiality and mirativity, and explain the mechanism from linguistic typological perspective. The evidentiality of ‘Zhen(真)’ tells us that the information indicated by the proposition is not obtained indirectly, but that the speaker is the direct source of the information. In addition, the mirativity of ‘Zhen(真)’ indicates that the information conveyed by the speaker is unpredictable, new, contrary to the presupposition, and carrying the meaning of being surprised at the unexpected event. Through this analysis, this paper could logically and systematically explain the apparently exceptional and very complex function of ‘Zhen(真)’. The categories such as epistemic modality, evidentiality, and mirativity may or may not be expressed by grammatical markers cross-linguistically, and may or may not be clearly distinguished from each other. It can be said that Chinese is a type of language in which the grammatical markers rarely developed and the categories are not clearly distinguished from each other. This paper has great significance in proving that those categorial properties are involved in the functional development of actuality adverbs in Chinese and the categorial features can be captured by the co-occurring elements or context.