Chinese Double-object Structure In The Buddhist Sutra During The Western Jin Dynasty

Double-object structure as a reference to Verb-object an important type of structure has been widespread concerned by academics. The ancient Chinese study focused on the Pre-Qin Dynasty and the stage rarely set foot in Middle Chinese. In particular, the study of Double-object structure is almost on a blank during the Wei, Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties period, which is an important transition period. Based on the investigation on the Western Jin Dynasty Buddhist sutra, which total have more than 240 million words, this thesis has a detailed statistics and analysis of the Double-object stucture and its correlative structures.There is a total of 737 case, with 72 Double-object verbs, the frequency of 0.31 / 1,000 words,49 Monosyllabic verbs,23 Two-syllable verbs. Based on Double-object structure of the typical characteristics of the semantic level, it will be divided into four categories: giving, receiving, noticing and titling category. Giving and receiving categories are the largest. Noticing is just after them. The titling category is the smallest one. We found that the verb is always connected with three cases of Agent, Recipient and Patient. The vitality of the three cases lowers in order: Agent>Recipient>Patient. Compared to the Indirect Object (O₁), the direct object (O₂) has the characters of low vitality, low definiteness, abstract and more syllables. According to the end-focus and end-weight maxim, the Far Object (O₂) is the barycenter and focus of the Double-object construction V-O₁-O₂.The sentence pattern of the Double-object structure and its correlative structures in the Western Jin Dynasty Buddhist sutra are listed as follows:(1). Double-object structureA.V-O₁-O₂; B. V-O₂-O₁;(2).1) Empty words markâ‘ "yu"markC.V+yu+O₁+O₂; D.V+O₂+yu+O₁;â‘¡."yi"mark E.V+O₁+yi+O₂;â‘¢."cong"markF.cong+O₁+V+O₂;2) Word order markG.O₁+S+V+O₂; H.O₂+S+V+O₁;3) Comprehensive markâ‘ .With"yi"I.yi+O₂+V+O₁;â‘¡.With"yi"and"yu"J. yi+O₂+V+yu+O₁;(3).OthersK. V₁+O₂+V2(yu)+ O₁; L.V-yu+ O₁+O₂ .We had a more in-depth discussion about"K"and"L"sentence construction. We believe that the"K"sentence structure has existed in Western Han Dynasty already. The"L"sentence structure is not two-verb structure. The"V"and"yu"'s relationship is not a Verb Phrase, and just a Dual-compound verb.