An Analysis of Adverbial Structures in Chinese and Thai Languages

Abstract

This research investigates the adverbial structures of modern Chinese. Firstly, a comparative study is made between Thai and Chinese in terms of grammatical functions and structures of adverbs. The findings are: According to grammatical functions of adverbs, the Thai and Chinese adverbs are identical, that is they are modifiers, adverbs modify verb phrases and adjectival phrases in the sentence. Liu Yuehua et al. (2004) pointed out that Chinese adverbs are classified as “descriptive adverbs” and “none-descriptive adverbs”, Chen Jingmiao (2005) pointed out that Thai adverbs are divided into “modificational, restrictive adverbs” and “commentary adverbs”. Regarding adverbial structures, the word order of Chinese adverbs occur (1) only after the subject, (2) both before and after the subject. Thai adverbs occur: (1) in front of the subject, (2) only after the subject, (3) only after the core verb group (at the end of a sentence), (4) either in fron tof or after a core verb group, (5) either in front of or afterthe subject.