The Development Of Chinese Pivotal Structure

This paper diachronically studies the development of Chinese Pivotal Structure on the basis of ten corpora reflecting the characteristics of oral mandarin from the ancient times to the Qing Dynasty.The whole paper consists of five parts:introduction,the grammatical features and diachronic evolution of the structure of Chinese Causative-verb Pivotal Structure,the grammatical features and diachronic evolution of the structure of Chinese you/wu Pivotal Structure,the grammatical features and diachronic evolution of the other structures of Chinese Pivotal Structure and Conclusion.The introduction mainly analyzes the general situation of the research,and defines the research object of this paper.The first part investigates and analyzes the evolution of the structure of the Chinese Causative-verb Pivotal Structure from the ancient to modern Chinese.The Causative-verb Pivotal Structure is divided into two kinds.One is the normal form“V₁+OS+V₂”,in which“the Subjective-Object”isn't omitted.The other is“V₁+V₂”,where“the Subjective-Object”is omitted.“V₁+OS+V₂”is the most abundant in the past dynasties and to be the predicate is its most common syntactic function.From<Zuozhuan>to<Legend of Heroes and Heroines>,the number of Causative-verbs₁ shows a trend of gradual increase.By the time of Ming and Qing Dynasties,the number of V₁ has been greatly increased,and the use of it has become more and more frequent.“?”has been in use for the longest time,It was divided into“?₁”and“?₂”in<Zuozhuan>,and they were the most widely used verbs at that time.Commonly used as“?₁”was,it was used far more often than“?₂”in Ancient China.During the DongHan Dynasty,the usage of“?₂”was far more than“?₁”in<Qiminyaoshu>and<Shishuoxinyu>,and in the Qing Dynasty,“?₁”was not used in<Legend of Heroes and Heroines>.The diachronic use and replacement of“?”“?”and“?”,“?₁”was budded in Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties,its was the earliest one of“?”“?”and“?”.“?₂”was the second one and it was budded in Tang Dynasty.“?₁”was the last one and it was budded in Yuan Dynasty.“?”“?”and“?”were used together in the Yuan Dynasty,“?”was the most frequently used at that time.“?”“?”and“?”were still used together in the Ming Dynasty,“?”and“?”were partially mixed on“calling”meaning.“?”and“?”gradually withdrew from the Causative-verb Pivotal Structure in the Qing Dynasty,their usage declined,and meanwhile“?₁”“?₂”and“?₃”reached their heyday.The Causative-verbs have the phenomenon of using and replacing in different historical periods,“?₂”“?₂”and“?”are the three longest used words which were used from Ancient Chinese period to the Qing Dynasty.Relatively rich new words appeared in the Tang Dynasty,Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty which witnessed the greatest ability of Causative-verbs to create new words at those times.The ellipsis of OS has gradually decreased in the historic development of Chinese.There were some in Ancient Chinese,but this ellipsis didn't decrease during the Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties,for in<Qiminyaoshu>it was more abundant than the others and had also been a very significant feature.From the Tang Dynasty,the ellipsis of OS began to decrease gradually,the retrieval results of language materials of Yuan,Ming and Qing Dynasties showed such a trend.The second part explores the evolution of the structure of the Chinese you/wu Pivotal Structure from ancient Chinese to modern Chinese.From<Zuozhuan>to<Legend of Heroes and Heroines>,the V₁ of the Chinese you/wu Pivotal Structure was“?”or“?”.Its affirmative form used only“?”from ancient Chinese to modern Chinese,and its negative form developed,“?”appeared in the Yuan Dynasty,“??”appeared in the Ming Dynasty.From the Ancient Chinese to Modern Chinese,the Chinese you/wu Pivotal Structure only has four V₁ and the affirmative form appeared more often than the negative form.The third part studies the evolution of the structure of the other Chinese Pivotal Structures from Ancient Chinese to Modern Chinese.The V₁s of the Exhorting Pivotal Structure and the Hoping Pivotal Structure have been very special during all the time,because they have undergone almost no changes and kept the continuity from the ancient time.The V₁s of the Feng-bai-ren-mian Pivotal Structure and the address ing Pivotal Structure have changed with the development of time and language.The conclusion summarizes the breakthrough and the unsolved problems of this paper.It is concluded that the common features of these six types of Pivotal Structure are to be used as predicates and independent sentences.This paper points out that the greatest changes occur in the number of the Chinese Causative-verb₁,which showed a gradually increasing trend from<Zuozhuan>to<Legend of Heroes and Heroines>.However,the number of V₁ in other classes is relatively small at all times.In addition to the Chinese you/wu Pivotal Structure,the other five kinds of Chinese Pivotal Structures all have ellipsis of OS.I have analyzed the syntactic structure and the diachronic changes of Chinese Pivotal Structures in this paper,but have researched less on their semantics and pragmatics,I will continue to study them in the future.