The Prosodic Configurations Of The Coordinating Conjunction "Er"

From the point of Semantics, the coordinating conjunction "er" stands for parallel relationship, progressive relationship, continued relationship, transition relationship, target relationship, hypothesized relationship, figurative relationship, and causality relationship. There are patterns of its prosodic configurations when "er" stands for parallel relationship.1.It is common that the constituents before and behind "er" are symmetric and are both disyllable.2.The constituents before and behind "er" can be both monosyllable.3.There are also some asymmetrical configurations, but they are only confined to the structure of "Monosyllable+er+Disyllable". I try to list all the configurations of the coordinating conjunction "er", and find out its formation mechanism from the point of prosodic grammar, semantics and stylistics. This article divides into three chapters.Chapter one, introduce the object and purpose of my study, research status both home and abroad, source of the corpora, etc. Research status of coordinating conjunction both home and abroad, and research status of "er" in ancient Chinese and modern Chinese will be emphatically summarized in this chapter. Chapter one will prepare necessary academic basis for the article.Chapter two will generalize the overall situation of prosodic configuration of coordinating conjunction "er". There are symmetric configurations and asymmetrical configurations. It is common that the constituents before and behind "er" are symmetric and are both disyllable. The prosodic configuration of coordinating conjunction "er" gives priority to the disyllabic constituents. But the constituents before and behind "er" can also be both monosyllable in some cases. And there are some asymmetrical configurations, but they are only confined to the structure of "Monosyllable+er+Disyllable".Chapter three mainly explain the formation mechanism of those configurations.1.When the constituents before and behind "er" are symmetric and are both disyllable. In my opinion, the reason for this situation is-"Moneme must be monosyllable, while foot must be disyllable."Whereas, composite prosodic words lead to symmetric of the constituents before and behind "er".2.When the constituents before and behind "er" are both monosyllable. I can explain the formation mechanism of this configuration in terms of stylistics, the connection between word length and semantic, and the speech of words before and behind "er" are adjectives.3.The formation mechanism of the asymmetrical configurations that are only confined to the structure of "Monosyllable+er+Disyllable" are nuclear stress and semantics. Overall, there are3prosodic configurations of the coordinating conjunction "er"-"Disyllable+er+Disyllable","Monosyllable+er+Monosyllable" and "Monosyllable+er+Disyllable". But then, there is only lack of the configuration of "Disyllable+er+Monosyllable". Therefore, I list all the corpora of "Monosyllable+er+Disyllable" and "Disyllable+er+Monosyllable ",to see their differences. Afterwards, I find out that some of the corpora of "Monosyllable+er+Disyllable" stands for parallel, while the corpora of "Disyllable+er+Monosyllable" don’t have the meaning of parallel.This conclusion can further consolidating the asymmetrical configuration gives priority to the structure of "Monosyllable+er+Disyllable".