A Research On The Adverbs In Sanyan

Feng Meng-long's Sanyan, a vernacular fiction collection in the Ming Dynasty, is of great research value of the history of Chinese, in particular, of Chinese dialects history. This thesis uses Sanyan as the main corpus and studies the adverbs in it. Combination of diachronic study with synchronic study, the study of the adverb system with the case study of the evolution of typical adverbs, static description with inductive analysis is used to explore the following issues on the basis of an exhaustive description of the adverbs, which are these: what is the adverb system of Sanyan? What are the characteristics of the adverbs in Sanyan? What are the characteristics of the emergence of new adverbs'meaning? How does the evolution of the aggregation relation of the adverbs in Sanyan occur? What are the similarities and differences between the dialectic adverbs in Sanyan and the common language ones at that time on the source issue? What are special laws of the grammaticalization of the dialectic adverbs? We hope to outline the main appearance of the adverb system in late Modern Chinese through the study of this thesis and to reveal the general laws and special laws of the formation, development,evolution of Chinese (including dialects) adverbs, so as to enrich and improve the current theory of grammaticalization.The whole thesis consists of five parts, the main contents are as follows:ChapterⅠIntroductionIn this section we discuss some basic issues about adverbs, and put forward our views. Briefly review the study survey of Chinese adverbs for the past two decades and point out their research achievements as well as shortcomings of scholars in the study of Chinese adverbs. Briefly introduce the characteristics of Sanyan as the Old Mandarin Chinese vernacular novels written in simple language and the linguistic study conditions, and fully affirm the research value of Chinese history of Sanyan. Point out the significance and methods of the study of the adverbs in Sanyan. Talk about the version of Sanyan and other related issues in the end.ChapterⅡClassified description and development of the adverb system in SanyanIn this section we comprehensively describe and outline the adverb system of Sanyan. This chapter fully absorb the research achievements in the study of the basic issues about adverbs by the language scholars. On this basis, we divide the adverbs in Sanyan into six sub-categories, i.e. scope adverb, degree adverb, time adverb, nagative adverb, manner adverb, modal adverb. Each type of adverbs are divided into two parts, i.e. Ancient and Middle Chinese adverbs or Old Mandarin Chinese adverbs according their appearance time. In sub-category description of adverb, we make a detailed description of the adverbs in Old Mandarin Chinese and a rough description of those in Ancient and Middle Chinese. Based on the previous description, the characteristics of the adverb system in Sanyan and its evolution and development are pointed out in the summary.ChapterⅢThe evolution of the adverb semantic system and common adverbs in SanyanThe polysemy of the common language adverbs in Sanyan was a common phenomenon. The new items of these polysemous adverbs tended to produce and be used in a small number of dialects especially in Wu dialect, hence, they had a strong dialect color. Some polysemous adverbs, such as "bijing"(毕竟), "duande"(端的),"man"(漫),"yishi"(一时),"zhe"((辄),"zhuan"(转), "zong"(总), etc. are chosen from Sanyan in the first section of this chapter. We try to inspect the souce and formation process of all their meanings appearing in Sanyan so as to sort out the intrinsic link between these items and reveal the semantic system of the polysemous adverbs and the unique formation mode of their new dialectic sense.Additional way is an important word-building approach of the adverbs in Sanyan. Among the many suffixes in Sanyan, the adverb suffix "ze"(则) has not yet attracted the attention and widely been recognized by scholars. SectionⅡstudies the souce of the adverb suffix "ze" and the development of ze-type adverbs in Old Mandarin Chinese.The evolution research of the common words has attracted wide attention in recent decades, however, scholars have often only focused on the study of popular notional words, yet neglected that of common adverbs. On the basis of the overall grasp of the adverbs in Sanyan, we choose six groups of adverbs, ie. "bucheng(不成), nandao(难道)"; "dong(动), dongzhe(动辄), dongbudong(动不动)"; "fan(凡), gong(共), tonggong(通共), zonggong(总共)"; "haosheng(好生), haobu(好不), haohao(好好)"; "pian(偏), pianpian(偏偏), piansheng(偏生)"; "you(尤), youqi(尤其)", to make a tentative system study on the evolution of each group. We hope to get a glimpse into the evolution law of Chinese adverb system through these examinations. Chapter IV The souce and the development of the dialectic adverbs in SanyanThis chapter is the focus of this thesis. As a vernacular fiction with a strong dialect color in the Ming Dynasty, slangy words abounded in it, especially the Wu dialect slangy words. In this chapter, we should use the advantages of abundant Wu dialectic literatures and select some adverbs with a strong Wu dialect color to explore their source. These dialectic adverbs are:"buchang"(不常), "chenchang"(趁常),"dafen"(大分), "duofen"(多分), "guaijian"(怪见), "haodao"(好道), "kezhi"(可知),"lan"(烂), "liushui"(流水), "nanshuo"(难说), "qiazheng"(恰正), "sheng"(生),"tegu"(特骨), "teye"(忒也),"yijing"((一径), "youxin"(有心), "zaisanzaisi"(再三再四),"zaoshi"(早是), "zhongburan"(终不然), "zuoding"(做定), etc. We have found some rules of the formation of dialectic adverbs through the comprehensive and systematic examination of the souces of these dialectic adverbs:1. Although there are differences between the common language adverbs and the dialectic ones, these differences are just between the common language and dialects.2. Many dialectic adverbs in Sanyan were not grammaticalized directly from the notional words, however, the new adverb meanings came from the similarity derivation(or synchronous derivation, accompanying derivation) and the analogy of other words, such as "buchang", "haodao", etc.3. Adverb class of the phenomenon of generalization word-formation of adverbs is very common. For example, "chenchang" was the generalization of "chenshi"(趁时), "nanshuo", was the generalization of "nandao"(难道).4. Some of adverbs have the same usage due to changes in pronunciation. They were just some different written forms of one adverb, such as "teye", "tegu", etc.5. The formation of some dialectic adverbs is closely related to the influence of rhetoric, culture and other factors "Liushui" is the typical example of the former is "liushui", and those of the latter are "zuoding" and "sanbuzhi"Conclusion section is a summary and the conclusion of the thesis.