The Conjunctions History Of Beijing Dialect (1750-1950)

The research on the conjunctions, as a part of modern Chinese functional wordsresearch, has been weak until Modern Chinese Conjunctions, a first modern Chineseconjunctions publication came out in2010. And, no research has been carried on itshistorical evolutions of Beijing Dialect,or BJD,in the two centuries from A.D.1750to1950.This paper, as a first explorer, is aimed to find the evolutions of BJD and construct thedevelopmental history, with focusing on this period of time. The eventual findings of itsevolutional rules will sure contribute the research on Chinese language history. This paperis trying to answer the following specific questions.What is the general picture of the conjunctions of BJD?How does it evolve during the said two centuries?What is the rule, if there is,during the evolutions?Synchronic descriptions and diachronic explanations of the said period of time arecarried on with the main language materials of three novels including A Dream of RedMansions (the first80chapters), The Story of Child Heroes and Zheng Hong Qi Xia, amasterpiece of Laoshe. And different respects of observations and analyses, through variedangles, synchronic and diachronic, micro and macro, is to reveal its functionalcharacteristics and historic variation rules.The research method is mainly a combination of qualification and quantification witha novel for a certain historical period for quantitative statics, that is, A Dream of RedMansions (the first80chapters) for the mid1700, The Story of Child Heroes for the mid1800and Zheng Hong Qi Xia for the mid1900respectively. The three novels in colloquialBJD with specific writing years are regarded as the best books in BJD. Comprehensive andconcrete statistics have been carried out to get a general picture of each historical period oftime; hence, the evolutions of conjunctions are clearly presented. And, Teahouse andDragon Beard Ditch,another two Laoshe's masterpieces with the same language features,have been added to the research as supplementary materials to make up for the shortage oflength of Zheng Hong Qi Xia, to get a better understanding of BJD in the mid1900. This paper includes eleven chapters in addition to the introduction and the conclusion.The first chapter, the summary of conjunctions history of BJD, covers three sectionsincluding the definition, determination, categories and distributions of the conjunctions.The second to the eleventh chapters discuss the historical evolutions of ten categoriesconjunctions of BJD (1750-1950), including coordinate conjunctions, progressiveconjunctions, undertaking conjunctions, selective conjunctions, hypothetic conjunctions,concessional conjunctions, causal conjunctions, disjunctive conjunctions, conditionalconjunctions, purposive conjunctions.The said two centuries have witnessed a series of variations of the conjunctions ofBJD, in the semantic relations as well as in the ability of syntactic connection and syntacticconstraints. The meanings and usages of the conjunctions had been rising and falling, andevolved continuously with more synonymous conjunctions coming out.The functions of the conjunctions have evolved like a parabola in general, namely, firstsimplification during the period of A Dream of Red Mansions, then gradually moving tothe complication and diversification during the period of The Story of Child Heroes, thenback to the relative simplification during the period of Zheng Hong Qi Xia. Or put itanother way, the members of conjunctions are much more in the period of A Dream of RedMansions, but comparatively simple in usage with comparison to the period of The Story ofChild Heroes. The members of conjunctions increase continuously and the usages are morecomplicated in the period of The Story of Child Heroes. The members of conjunctionsdecrease gradually with each word for a relatively specific function and a complementarytrend in distributions. All the above should attribute to the interaction of the economicalprinciple and continuous regularizations.