Study Of The Eastern Han Dynasty Brick Text Function Words

The material of this dissertation is based on the characters drawn or carved on the architectural material and potteries such as bricks and tiles. The characters on the bricks, tiles and potteries are called Zhuanwen. These words have the characteristic of colloquial Chinese and reflect the mundane lives of that time. The mundane characteristic of those characters is one of the best materials for the research of civilian colloquial Chinese and written language of the lower class. And these excavated materials are quite reliable for the research of language.However, to use the Zhuanwen of Donghan Dynasty to do the linguistic research, especially the research on the function words, is quite rare. The research object of this dissertation is the Zhuanwen of Donghan Dynasty. Quantity statistics is used to research thoroughly the function words in Zhuanwen of Donghan Dynasty. Based on the description, the grammatical rule is to be revealed.This dissertation is composed of two volumes.The first volume is of the basic research. The research object, the meaning of the research, the way of doing it and the bird view of the function words on the Zhuanwen in Donghan Dynasty is described at the beginning of the first volume. Then comes the general description of the prepositions, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliary words, tone words. At the same time, those function words are compared with those in "Lunheng", "Taiping Jing" and other sutras in Chinese. Every chapter is composed of several parts such as the analysis of the function words, the comparison of the function words on the Zhuanwen in Donghan Dynasty and the summary. The characteristic of the function words, the frequency of their use and the grammatical function is researched thoroughly in the dissertation.There are 61 function words on the Zhuanwen in Donghan Dynasty. The number of the adverbs is the biggest. Second are the prepositions.