A Study on the Factors in Modality Selections of “NP+Yao+VP” Construction in Modern Chinese

Abstract

From the perspective of modality, this paper studies the interaction between semantics and syntax of modal verb “Yao(要)”. Examines the syntactic features of construction “NP+Yao+VP” which behaves as dynamic modality, deontic modality and epistemic modality respectively on the basis of the established corpus. And there are differences in the grammatical functions between diverse “Yao(要)”.<BR> First, when “Yao(要)” presents a dynamic modality, “NP” can be a persona noun, a person pronoun and a demonstrative pronoun. When “Yao(要)” presents a deontic modality, “NP” can be a persona noun, a time noun, a place noun, a person pronoun and a demonstrative pronoun. And when “Yao(要)” presents an epistemic modality, “NP” can be a persona noun, a time noun, a place noun, and a demonstrative pronoun.<BR> Secondly, volitional verbs can enter any state of modality, a small number of nonvolitional verbs can enter the dynamic modality and deontic modality, and most nonvolitional verbs can enter the epistemic modality.<BR> Thirdly, when “NP+Yao+VP” to express dynamic modality and deontic modality, it can co-exist in most adverbs; when “NP+Yao+VP” to express epistemic modality, the degree adverbs and negative adverbs cannot appear in “NP+Yao+VP”.<BR> Finally, according to EDD rules and combined with the corpus , we found that when “NP+Yao+VP” to express dynamic modality, any modality verb can appear in front of “Yao (要)”. When “NP+Yao+VP” to express deontic modality, only deontic modality verb can appear in front of “Yao(要)”, When “NP+Yao+VP” to express epistemic modality, only epistemic modality verb can appear in front of “Yao(要)”.