A Study On Transitive Verbs In Archaic Chinese

This dissertation conserns two issues of the transitive verbs in archaicChinese:first,their syntactic representation and the underlyingmechanism;Sencond,the morphosyntactic function of tone-change derivation whichsome transitive verbs may have.Traditionally,it is difficult to sparate transitive verbs from intranstive verbsroughly,because sometimes transitive verbs have no objects,and still sometimesintransitive verbs may have objects.This dissertation surveyed some theory aboutverb study,such as ‘valance theory’and ‘verb lexical semantics’and the hierarchy ofthe meaning of sentences which Givón brought up,then find that:(1)The syntactic representations of verbs,i.e.how many arguments and whatkind of arguments a verb may take, are decided primarily by its meaning.In fact,themeaning of verb is a ideal cognitive model(ICM).(2)The meaning of sentences including at least two layers:one is propositionsemantics,another is discourse pragmatics.In the process ofcommunication,sentences that merely take proposition semantics and take nodiscourse pragmatics do not exist.(3)So,transitive verbs are verbs which imply two or more arguments.Whenexpressing proposition semantics,the sentences will have arguments that the meaningof transitive verb imply.If the arguments that the meaning of verb imply do notappear,or appeared but do not in their proper location,it is the discourse pragmaticsthat make the syntactic compensation.On the basis of the preceding frame,this dissertation studied more than80transitive verbs in archaic Chinese. By and large,the opinions of transitive verbsabove are verified.Some verbs may change their meaning and part of speech through changingtone.In this dissertation, firstly,the syntactic representation of verb wasclassified,then the different function of the verb which the different tone makes was examined.After detailed study,we find that tone-change is a kind of morphosyntacticphenomenon in archaic Chinese,it is related not only to the meaning of verbs,but tothe syntactic representation,even to the directional category of the verb,among others.This dissertation is divided into three parts:from preface to chapter3is thetheoretical part;from chapter4to chapter20is the practical parts;from chapter21tochapter24is the part of conclusion.Preface show clearly that the study of verb is very important in grammar,andpoint out the problems when studying the transitive verbs in archaic Chinese.Chapter1reviews the studying history of transitive verbs in archaic Chinese,pointing out the archivements and shortcomings.Chapter2investigates several kinds theory about verb,trying to find theirhighlights and common features,consist of valence theory,verb lexical semantics,andhierarchy of sentence meaning.And this dissertation will study the argumentrealization of verbs on the basis of separation the proposition meaning andcommucative meaning of sentences.Chapter3give a definition of transitive verb,and the study scope is about broadsense transitive verb.The target,methods,and process of this study are also given inthis chapter.From chapter4to chapter20is the description and study of transitiveverbs.This including(1) comparing synonyms to find out the generalized meaning ofverbs,and what make them different;(2)the number of arguments a verb may takewhen expressing proposition semantics,and what role the arguments maybear;(3)what elements will affect the number and location of arguments insentences;(4)if a verb have a different tone,what is its function.Chapter21concludes that verbs in archaic Chinese can be divided into fourtypes on the basis of syntax:(1)transitive verbs,their typical syntactic forms areNP1+V+NP2;(2)unergative verbs,their typical syntactic forms areNP1+V;(3)unaccusative verbs,their typical syntactic forms areNP2+V;(4)adjectives,when being predicative,their typical syntactic forms areNP2+Adj.When expressing proposition semantics,every type of verbs will take theirtypical forms;while taking atypical forms,it is the pragmatics make the change. Chapter22concluded the elements which affected the syntactic representationof transitive verbs in archaic Chinese.(1)The reason which cause a transitive verbdoes not take a objec;(2)The reason which cause the object preceed theverb,i.e.NP2+V;(3)What makes the forms change from normal to abnormal, such asNP1+见+V and NP1+为+V;(4)The reason that make the object be put in the secondplace in sentences,i.e.NP1+NP2+V.Chapter23is about tone-chage of verbs.first,we reviewed the study of thisphenomena,and point out the insufficiences.This dissertation gives four mainfunctions of tone-change:the directional function;the function of valenceincreasing;the function of restricted meaning;and the function of nominalization.Thefunction of tone-change is very complicated and need further investigation.Chapter24is the further discussion of the study, pointing out the archivementsand shortcomings of this study,and take a look ahead of the study in future.