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Nominalization of Predicate Coordinate Structures in Modern Chinese

Gijeong Jeon 1

1선문대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the nature of predicate coordination and its nominalization in modern Chinese, which have been a field of limited research. In English and Korean, when a verb appears at the position of a subject or an object, it goes through a process of explicit nominalization by changing its form or adding a suffix, but in Chinese, it can come to the position of a subject or an object without a morphological change. This pattern also appears in the predicate coordination connected by multiple verbs or adjectives. In modern Chinese, the most common conjunctions used in predicate coordination structures are “而”, “並” and “和”, but their usages vary considerably. While the predicate coordinate structure using “和” could be freely positioned, the predicate coordinate structure that uses “並” or “而” can come to the predicative or adnominal position only but cannot come to the subject or object position. This paper finds that the verbal coordinate structure connected by “並” has verbal characteristics only, but the verbal coordinate structure connected by “和” has both noun and verbal characteristics, which makes the noun or verbal characteristics stronger or weaker depending on its position. In other words, the predicate coordinate structure connected by “和” has strong noun characteristics when it comes to the position of a subject or an object, and has strong verbal characteristics when it is in the position of the predicate. However, even if it comes to the position of a predicate, it does not lose its noun characteristics completely. Its verbal characteristics could manifest with the support of other supplementary elements, such as adverb, object, and complement.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.