A contrastive study of the semantic prosody of Time adverbs "jiàn jiàn" and " màn màn "

Abstract

This study taking " màn màn" and " jiàn jiàn" as an example, on the basis of syntactic description, using the theory of semantic prosody, combined with the research methods of employing data and analysis、being qualitative and quantifying, under the support of professional knowledge and technique, analyses contrastively the colligation and semantic prosody of the overlapping time adverbs "màn màn" and " jiàn jiàn". It is found that " jiàn jiàn" is more commonly used when describing the state, while "màn màn" is more commonly used when modifying the action. What’s more, the proportion of the neutral collocation of " jiàn jiàn" and "màn màn" is basically same. In the comparison between positive collocation and negative collocation, the negative collocation of " jiàn jiàn" is more, and the positive collocation of "màn màn" is more. P.