摘要

   缓和型模糊限制语是模糊限制语中的一种。在英汉学术论文中，缓和型模糊限制语的语用价值已引起诸多学者的关注，但关于英汉两种语言的学术论文中缓和型模糊限制语的定量对比研究尚不多见。因此，本文首先介绍了缓和型模糊限制语的分类及实现形式。然后以英汉学术论文摘要中所出现的缓和型模糊限制语为语料，分别建立两个语料库。通过定量对比研究发现，就使用频率和实现形式而言，在英汉缓和型模糊限制语的使用上存在着相似点，同时也存在着差异。最后，从语用功能的角度分析，英汉缓和型模糊限制语都具有增强作者观点的生动性及可信性，保护作者、减轻其责任和在读者面前保持谦逊态度的作用。

关键词：缓和型模糊限制语；学术论文摘要；对比研究；语用功能

Abstracts

Shields are one kind of hedges. In English and Chinese academic thesis, the value of shields’ pragmatic functions has caused a lot of attention from scholars. However, the quantitative contrastive research about shields in English and Chinese academic thesis is quite seldom. Therefore, in this paper, firstly we introduce the classifications of shields and ways of realizations. Then two databases are created based on shields appeared in the selected abstracts of English and Chinese academic thesis. Through a quantitative contrastive analysis we find that there are similarities and differences on the frequency of shields and the ways of realization of shields in both English and Chinese academic thesis abstracts. Finally in the view of pragmatic functions, both the English shields and Chinese shields have the same functions of helping the author to make his opinions more vivid and more convincible, helping to protect the author and lighten his responsibilities, and helping to maintain the principle of politeness in communication.

Key words: Shields; academic thesis abstracts; contrastive study; pragmatic functions.

1．Introduction

The study of fuzzy linguistics started in 1960s, targeting at the vagueness used in languages. The theoretical principle of fuzzy linguistics is American cyberneticist Zadeh’s the fuzzy sets theory (1965). The famous American linguistics Lakoff first put forward the concept of “Hedge” in 1972. Subsequently different scholars did more researches about hedges. As Lakoff said, hedges are “Words whose job is to make things fuzzy or less fuzzy”. The study of fuzzy linguistics at home began in late 1970s. Wu Tieping’s fuzzy linguistics published in foreign languages is the first article studying the fuzzy languages by applying fuzzy theory. With the development of linguistics in 1980s, especially the developments of pragmatics, utterance analysis, text linguistics and other courses, the concept of hedges has extended from the area of semantics to the areas of pragmatics and text analysis.