A Research On The Adverbs In The Travels Of Lao Ts’an

The Travels of Lao Ts’an written by Liu E is the representative of rebuking novels in the Late Qing Dynasty, and it is considered as the historical archives of arts for later generations to know the society in Late Qing Dynasty. Meanwhile, it’s not only one of the precious heritages in the history of Chinese literature, but also an important material for studying the history of Chinese lexicology.The adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an are the main objective for the research.By analyzing The Travels of Lao Ts’an comprehensively, the origin and the development of adverbs in Late Qing Dynasty have been probed so as to describe the basic outlook and era characteristics of adverbs in Late Qing Dynasty and to further study the development of whole adverbs in Chinese lexicology, and finally to lay the foundation for confirming the important role of development of adverbs in Late Qing Dynasty which have taken part in grammatical history.By means of description and explanation, synchronic research and diachronic research, quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis; a detailed description and interpretation in the frequency of utilization, combination function, grammatical function and co-occurrence order of515adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an have been researched. Although the adverbs are common adverb, some meanings and usages of them in Late Qing Dynasty are different from those in the pre-Qin period and also from those in contemporary time. The unique meanings and usages in Late Qing Dynasty are of high value for being researched, and they are worthy to be analyzed comprehensively and completely. Therefore, this article has been done to explain the special language phenomenons and questions found in diachronic comparison so as to supply the real and reliable language materials in Late Qing Dynasty and research reference for the whole study of modern Chinese adverbs and finally to put forward further researches on Chinese adverbs and the history of Chinese lexicology. The innovation of this article is that it is the first time to figure and clear out all the adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an and then set up a language database of these adverbs. Finally, from semantic, syntactic and pragmatic angles, this article shows a research on the adverbs and the discussion about the motivation of the development of adverbs by knowledge of cognitive linguistics and grammatical theory.This article comprises five chapters as following:Chapter one, Introduction, it’s about the definition of adverb and the virtual-actual category, the historical review of subcategorization of Chinese adverbs, principles and standards of distinguishing Chinese adverbs from other parts of speech, the reason for writing this article and the value of this article, the recent research situation about adverbs in academy, the introduction of The Travels of Lao Ts’an, and the research scope of adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an, setting up the linguistic database for the adverbs and so on.Chapter two, it’s about the classification description of adverbs. Firstly, by combination of the former classification and the real language materials in the book. Adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an have been classified and listed in general categories including frequent usage which is helpful for the recognition of adverbs.It is found that there are ten categories of adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an:modal adverb, correlative adverb, adverb of time, adverb of frequency, scope adverb, adverb of degree, negative adverb, coordination adverb, adverb of repetition and modal adverb. Finally, the typical and non-typical categories of adverbs are analyzed so as to know the grammatical relevance and grammatical particularity within adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an.Chapter three, it’s about the combination of grammatical function and semantic orientation of adverbs. Firstly, the grammatical functions have been discussed. It is found that some adverbs in modern time can modify not only single adjectives and verbs freely but also noun structures, quantitative structures, fixed phrases and subject-predicate structures. Secondly, semantic orientation has been analyzed. After studying The Travels of Lao Ts’an, it is found that there are two semantic orientations about adverbs:forward semantic direction of adverb and backward semantic direction of adverb. Thirdly, it is found that there are differences and similarities between the grammatical function and semantic orientation, and the analyzed reasons for both of them. Fourthly, the adverb "de" has been discussed detailedly.Chapter four, it’s about single usage and co-occurrence order phenomenons about adverbs. Firstly, it’s about single usage phenomenon of adverbs, it is found that the single usage of adverbs is rare, there are only5adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an Secondly, according to the former researches about co-occurrence, it is found that the co-occurrence order of adverbs can be like this:modal adverb, correlative adverb, adverb of time, adverb of frequency, scope adverb, adverb of degree, negative adverb, coordination adverb, adverb of repetition and modal adverb. Thirdly, besides what talked above, there are some changing orders for example:scope adverb, adverb of time; modal adverb, negative adverb; adverb of time, negative adverb and adverb of degree.Chapter five, it’s about the comparison between adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an and in contemporary time. Firstly, a combined research about adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an with synchronic and diachronic comparison have been done. Secondly, after the comparison, it is found that there are three directions about the heritage, development and usage of adverbs in modern Chinese:some adverbs are used in modern Chinese as well as in contemporary Chinese; some adverbs have disappeared in contemporary Chinese; some usages of some adverbs have been changed in contemporary Chinese. Thirdly, by the principle of combining quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, the origin and development of adverbs have been probed by case study method, and the way of the historical development of adverbs in The Travels of Lao Ts’an by combination with synchronic and diachronic researches have been described. Finally, by the knowledge of cognitive linguistic and functional linguistic, this article focuses on the synchronic syntactic function of the adverbs and the changes in diachronic comparison.Conclusion.