The Study Of The Particle Words Used In Suzhou Tanci With Selected Texts Of The Qing Dynasty

The subject of the study in this dissertation is the particle words used in the stories ofSuzhou Tanci, with selected texts of the Qing Dynasty as a case.Suzhou Tanci originated in Suzhou and is widely spread and popular in Jiangsu,Zhejiang and Shanghai. It is a combination of prose and verse, a narrative-based art ofsinging and story-telling in the Suzhou dialect. Along with Pinghua, it belongs to the art ofSuzhou Pingtan Ballad.The traditional Tanci works are mostly passed down from the Qing Dynasty Literature.They are regarded as valuable literature for investigating the Suzhou dialect of that timebecause of their relative complete reservation of the original local tongue. Based oncomparative analysis, three representative scripts are selected as the basis of the corpus fortheir great popularity and diverse contents, namely Miaojinfeng（描金凤）、Zhenzhuta（珍珠塔）、Yuqingting（玉蜻蜓）.In this dissertation, a general investigtion of the particles used in the three scripts ofthe corpus is made, with their classifications and statistics, which then is taken as the basisfor further comparison, association and reduction in the analysis of the rules of using thesetype of words in terms of tenses, moods function and structuring. Particular emphasis isgiven to the spoken expressions in actual performance and the comparison between theuses of them in the contemporary and Qing-Dynasty Suzhou dialects, and their changesover time.In spite of the fact that considerable research has been reported in the studies of thecontemporary Suzhou dialect, attention to the conditions of the tongue in the Qing Dynastyis still lacking, and reports of studies of the particles used in it at that time are especiallyscarce. With this consideration, this dissertation serves as a new attempt to further theresearch in this regard. This dissertation has six parts, as follows.The introduction presents the general situation of research in Suzhou Tanci and itsdialect and the object of this study, its significance, method, and contents of research andformat.Chapter I introduces the general conditions of literature of Suzhou Tanci scriptspassed down from the Qing Dynasty, including the texts, time of appearance, language andstories told in them. The three selected scripts are taken as representatives and givenspecial emphasis, especially regarding of the language used. In particular, differences inauxiliary participles of them are analized in three classifications made in accordance totheir origins, namely those of the Suzhou dialect, Mandarin, and the classical Chinese(Wenyan). For the purpose of clarification, the conditions of the latter two origins arebriefly introduced in addition.Chapter II gives a descriptive analysis of the auxiliary words in the Suzhou dialect asused in the Tanci texts passed down from the Qing Dynasty. Beginning with a review ofthe discussions in the academia about the Tanci auxiliary words, it then classified them intofour basic types following Cao Guangshun’s standard of classification in his The AuxiliaryWords in the Modern Chinese（近代汉语助词）: the modatives, the structives, dynamicverbal functives, and event auxiliaries. On this basis, the grammatical functions andsyntactic features are disclosed, with a discussion of their counterparts in the contemporarySuzhou dialect.Chapter Ⅲ is composed of a featured discussion of the auxilaries in the selectedTanci scripts, which includes the following:An analysis of the relative relations between the dialect auxiliaries of [ts (?) ts lo]（子，哉，洛） and the Mandarin auxiliaries of le（了）；A comparation of the dialect auxiliary [k(?)]（个） and the Mandarin auxiliary de（的）in terms of their gramatical functions and meanings；A study of the process in which the verbs [t (?)]（得），[k (?)u]（过） and[th(?)]“脱”gradually evolved as auxiliaries;Discussions of the distinctions between modative auxiliaries and exclamative words,with an analysis of the double functions of such words as [a]（吓）and [u]（哙）;Discussions of the changes of auxiliary words that took place over time from within the Tanci texts of the Qing Dynasty to the contemporary speech of the Suzhou dialect.Conclusion: Based on the above chapters, a summary is made of the historicalchanges of auxiliary system of the Suzhou dialect and the features of the auxiliary words.They are seen as a relatively stable and yet dynamically changing category ofgrammatically functioning words in the language, assuming different properties in differentplaces and periods of time. In the existing literature of Tanci texts passed down from theQing Dynasty, not only prominent features of the auxiliary words used in the particulartime are observed, but the general contour of their contemporarily uses are also disclosed.