Clitics have not received enough attention in Chinese language studies, which caused a lot of difficulties when analyzing many language phenomena and conducting cross-linguistic comparative research. Based on the most classical and core clitic theories of Western linguistics, this thesis revises and improves the conclusions about the properties, classification and identification of clitics, and introduces clitics into Chinese language studies in full extent with several case studies carried out synchronically and diachronically. Through all the analysis and discussion, we propose a more reasonable and more universal theoretical framework, and at the same time fill the gaps both in theory analysis and material collection. The following cases are discussed in our research: modal particles, structural particles and aspect particles in Chinese, de (的) in quasi-attributive structures, the modal clitics sin(zi)/zi dak gaa (先(至)/至得 ) in Cantonese, the clitic zhi (之) in Chongqing dialect, the clitic zai ({F) in Cantonese and the diminutive markers in other Chinese dialects, the proclitics a (5J) in many Chinese dialects, and the swear word clitics, resumptive pronoun clitics and speaking verb clitics that are widely found in Madarin and Chinese dialects.

語綴現象在漢語研究中一直未得到足夠的重視,以致于在分析很多語言現 象時常會出現棘手的難題,而且這一句法單位的缺失也使得跨語言的比較研究 缺乏一個合理的基礎。本研究從西方對語綴最經典、最核心的理論闡述出發, 完善了關於語綴性質、分類和鑒別標準等問題的已有理論,將語綴概念全面引 進漢語研究,並從共時和歷時兩方面分析了漢語中的若干語綴個案,為相關現 象的研究提供了更合理且更具普遍性的解釋方案,同時填補了理論和材料上的 諸多空白。 本研究討論的個案包括漢語的語氣助詞、結構助詞和動態助詞,準定語結 構中的語綴「的」,粵語的語氣語綴「先(至)/至得 」,重慶方言的語綴「之」, 粵語的語綴「仔」和漢語方言中的小稱語綴,許多漢語方言中的前語綴「阿」, 漢語普通話及方言中廣泛存在的置詞語綴、複指代詞語綴和言說動詞語綴。