Explicit expression of unconditionality using conjunctions in Chinese

Abstract

This article discusses unconditionals in Chinese. Conjunctions with unconditional meaning, which serve for the explicit transmission of meaning in a sentence, are chosen as a subject of research. The purpose of the study is to find the conjunctions with explicit expression of unconditionality in the Chinese language. In addition to Chinese, the Russian language is also considered for a comparative analysis of conjunctions in different languages. A comparative analysis is carried out for all types of unconditionality after the description of each section. In this article not only conjunctions with unconditional meaning, but also correlates (words which clarify the meaning of the condition in the first part of the sentence) and the order of two clauses (main and dependent) are compared. The research methods include the search for conjunctions and correlatives from Chinese dictionaries and grammars for a further distribution of them in groups, consideration of conjunctions’ semantic, combination and stylistic features through dictionaries. As Chinese unconditional sentences have been little studied among Russian typologists, this article contains a certain scientific novelty. As a result, three types of unconditionals have been identified in total: absolute, irreal and real. Due to the differentiation of conjunctions in sentences with the absence of a condition, it was found out that a variety of similar words in the Chinese language is as rich as in the Russian one. At the end there are two tables with all the conjunctions both in Russian and in Chinese. In this article Russian is less emphasized because it has been researched earlier by other typologists. This material can be useful not only for sinologists, but also for the specialists in general linguistics.