The Translation of the Function Word “Jiu” in Chinese-.doc

The Translation of the Function Word “Jiu” in Chinese 1. Introduction 1.1 Function Word In English, function word is a “term for linguistic elements which carry primarily grammatical, rather than lexical, meaning and which fulfill mainly syntactic and structural function.” “Function words include articles, pronounce, prepositions, and conjunction” (Hadumod, 2000: 175). In the dictionary Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, Matthews (2001:140) defines the function word as “one with grammatical meaning as opposed to lexical meaning: e. g. the and of are function words (or grammatical words or form words) in the top of Everest”. While in Chinese, “The function word is one void of lexical meaning. It cannot be used independently to answer a question but can aid lexical words to form a sentence.” “The function word includes adverb, preposition, conjunction, particle, and interjection” (Jia Shuanghu, 1983: 2). Function word can only be attached to lexical words or sentences, denoting the grammatical relationship between lexical words, the emotion and tone of the speaker rather than articles, movement, or quantity, and cannot be used independently as an element in a sentence (Wang Jinzheng et al. 1984: 372). Based on the definitions above, one thing the author wants to point out is that in Chinese, the adverb is considered as the function word while it is not the case in English. This paper tends to take adverb as a function word because the materials about the word “jiu” in source language are written in Chinese. 1.2 “Jiu” in Chinese In Modern Chinese, the word “jiu” is frequently used. With complicated and various grammatical functions, it can be used as an adverb, a preposition, a conjunction, or even a verb. And within each functional range, it can be specifically classified into several types. Its high frequency of appearance and diverse grammatical functions have long attracted the attention of many experts, most of whom are Chinese, to do some researches on its