A Grammatical Study of Chinese Counter-Expectation Marker “Jìngrán” -in Comparison with Korean Counter-Expectation Marker “-tani”

Abstract

The Chinese accidental commentary adverb “Jìngrán” and Korean conjunction ending “-tani” fall within the scope of typical counter-expectation markers in Chinese and Korean. The two mainly show that what happens objectively is contrary to expectations, which then express the emotion of surprise. Despite the fact that “Jìngrán” and “-tani” are known as typical counter- expectation markers in their languages, respectively, the two are not completely opposite to each other in terms of grammar, and differences are available between the two in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. With the assistance of corpus, this study mainly starts from the perspective of language comparison, so as to carry out analysis on the characteristics of Chinese and Korean counter- expectation markers “Jìngrán” and “-tani” in the three planes of grammar research, and it can draw the conclusions as follows initially. At the level of syntactic, Chinese “Jìngrán” can appear at the beginning and in the middle of a sentence. With regard to Korean “-tani”, it can appear in the middle or at the end of a sentence. Concerning the types of expectation semantic, both Chinese and Korean-related expressions can be employed in the expression of a single expectation type, and the self-expectation types are great in number. However, Chinese “Jìngrán” can mark the types of compound expectation, with a variety of types. Korean “-tani” generally does not mark the types of compound expectation, and the types are relatively simple. At the level of pragmatics, Chinese “Jìngrán” generally lays emphasis on post-information, and “post-positioned focus” is more than “pre-positioned focus”.