This research focused on the fact that Neng V de C(能V得C) implies ‘possibility’, which means ‘can do~’, while it is different from Neng V C(能VC) and V de C(V得C). Here are the following results: First, when Neng V de C(能V得C) is used in declarative sentence, the adverb such as Cai(才) or Hai(还) is used together in front of it to provide conditions or hypothesis for the goal, and psychological factors such as judgment, guess, claim, and denial are following, ‘Zhiyao……jiu(只要……就)’ is used the most among them.
Second, when Neng V de C(能V得C) is used with interrogative such as Zenme(怎么), Shenme(什么), Shei(谁), Nali(哪里), interrogative usually implies scolding, impossibility, strangeness, anxiety, criticism, opposition and it does not indicate location, method, or cause.
Third, when Neng V de C(能V得C) is used in interrogative sentence, it usually represents the meaning of rhetoricalness or possibility. The negative meaning formation of rhetorical sentence is mostly due to doubt. The speaker uses rhetorical sentence when he/she thinks the context of the two adjacent sentence is incorrect, abnormal, or does not match. Especially the usage of rhetorical marker such as Nandao(难道), Hebi(何必), Qi(岂) is remarkably high and non-marker interrogative sentences use intonation to convey rhetorical intentions instead of specific rhetorical marker.
Finally, declarative and interrogative(non-marker) sentence of Neng V de C(能V得C) have differences in duration, pitch, pitch register, and in case of interrogative sentence final syllable lengthened, intonation rised, and the shape of tone contour was found to be the same as citation tone.
This research is meaningful in that it started from syntactic and semantic point of view, analyzed massive amount of corpus and studied how does Neng V de C(能V得C) actually works in real language environment, and it can be used in Chinese education field.
