CORELATION BETWEEN VIETNAMESE AND CHINESE EMPHASIZED QUESTIONING ADVERBS NANDAO (难道)

Abstract

Adverb is an important constituent part of the Chinese formal word system. Adverb comes in many different types, each with its own function. What is the feature of adverb in questions using nandao (难道)? How does a formal word turn itself into an adverb? In the article, the data were collected from Beijing resource and 70 Vietnamese literary works to examine the changes of meaning, position in a sentence and pragmatic meaning of nandao in Chinese in comparison with Vietnamese. The results show that nandao has only one expression in Chinese while there are many equivalent expressions in Vietnamese. They can take different positions in a sentence to emphasize, to increase the effectiveness of expression, and to display speaker’s attitude and viewpoint about something.