Adverbs
The existence of adverbs as an independent category in Mandarin is uncontroversial (Zhu 1982 ; Huang et al. 2009 : Chap. 1; Zhang 2010 : Chap. 3). In this chapter, I start by reviewing the properties of adverbs (Sect. 6.2 ). Then, I discuss the classifica
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Adverbs
6.1
Introduction
The existence of adverbs as an independent category in Mandarin is uncontroversial (Zhu 1982; Huang et al. 2009: Chap. 1; Zhang 2010: Chap. 3). In this chapter, I start by reviewing the properties of adverbs (Sect. 6.2). Then, I discuss the classification of adverbs based on their interpretational properties and distributional patterns (Sect. 6.3), seeking to highlight their similarities to and differences from their English counterparts. Section 6.4 summarizes the chapter.
6.2
Basic Properties of Adverbs
Adverbs are generally used to modify verbs and adjectives. They typically occur between the subject and a verb phrase or a gradable adjective (see Sect. 4.2.1.2), as shown in the following examples. The presence of the verb phrase or gradable adjective is mandatory, as adverbs, unlike verb phrases and gradable adjectives, cannot serve as predicates.
© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 C.C.-H. Cheung, Parts of Speech in Mandarin, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0398-1_6
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6.3
6 Adverbs
Classification of Adverbs
As Paul (to appear) shows, adverbs in Mandarin can be broadly divided into two classes: sentence-level adverbs and VP-level adverbs. As we will see, a key difference between the two classes of adverbs is that most sentence-level adverbs can appear immediately before or after the subject (Sect. 6.3.1), whereas VP-level adverbs can only appear after the subject (Sect. 6.3.2).1
6.3.1
Sentence-level Adverbs
As Li and Thompson (1981: Chap. 8) show, sentence-level adverbs can be further divided into two subclasses: temporal adverbs and attitude adverbs. I first examine the distributional patterns of temporal adverbs in Mandarin, highlighting their similarities to and differences from their English counterparts (Sect. 6.3.1.1). Then, I turn to attitude adverbs in Mandarin and discuss how they are similar to and different from temporal adverbs in Mandarin (Sect. 6.3.1.2).
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There are many alternative ways to classify adverbs in Chinese. Interested readers are referred to Li (1924), Wang (1934), Zhang (1959), Hu (1962), Chao (1968: Sect. 8.3), Lü (1979), Li and Thompson (1981: Chap. 8), Zhang (1987), Qian (1990) and Zhang (2010: Chap. 3) for alternative means of classifying adverbs.
6.3 Classification of Adverbs
6.3.1.1
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Temporal Adverbs
Temporal adverbs signal the time at which or during which the event described by the sentence occurs. Some examples of temporal adverbs are jīntiān 今天 ‘today’, qùnián 去年 ‘last year’, zànshí 暫時 ‘temporarily’, jiānglái 將來 ‘(in the) future’, xiànzài 現在 ‘now’ and xiàwǔ 下午 ‘(in the) afternoon’. As mentioned in Sect. 6.3, sentence-level adverbs can appear immediately before or after the subject. This is true of temporal adverbs, as shown in (2)–(4).
While Mandarin temporal adverbs are similar to their English counterparts in that they can appear before the subject (consider, for instance, English sentences such as Today, he was happy and Last year, he did not return), Mandarin temporal adverbs can immediately follow the subject, wher
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