A Study On The Evolution Of Chinese Prepositions Since The Ming And Qing Dynasties

Pre-modern Chinese is important period in history of Chinese language, and language of Ming and Qing period is transitional one between pre-modern and modern Chinese; many of the characteristics of modern Chinese grammar have been formed, evolved and completed in pre-modern Chinese, during Ming and Qing period, and is same in many aspects, while showing some differences, as well. Therefore, the research of Chinese prepositions of Ming and Qing period and describing grammatical properties of Chinese prepositions in different periods,'helps in understanding motivation and mechanism of evolvement of Chinese prepositions, reveals rules of evolvement, has great value in research of history of lexicography, history of grammar and history of Chinese language.The objective of the thesis is prepositions of Ming and Qing period, and modern Chinese from three different aspects:The first part gives an outline of prepositions and their characteristics in Ming and Qing period, and those in modern Chinese.The first three chapters describe prepositions and give their semantical analysis by introducing 34 monosyllabic and 18 disyllabic prepositions, giving the overall picture by choosing the representative ones used in Ming, Qing period and modern Chinese, respectively.The second part gives a summary of evolvement of prepositions from Ming and Qing period towards modern Chinese. The forth chapter gives the analysis and comparison of preposition evolvement, mainly dividing them into those whose semantical functions have decreased, or expanded, as well as introducing prepositions that have emerged or disappeared.The third part gives analysis and summary of of Chinese prepositions, the mechanism and motivation of their evolvement.The fifth chapter gives the analysis of the prepositional evolvement mechanism and motivation.Those include semantical, grammatical, cognitive, etc. aspects; semantical aspects include semantical generalization, synchronized word expansion etc. Grammatical aspects of change include syntactic change; cognitive ones include of metaphore mechanism, semantical reanalysis etc.Apart from underlying factors, including the reasons of the word evolvement, there is also concept of time as one dimension as mechanism of surface-induced change.The formation, development and evolvement of prepositions include many different aspects and are result of many different factors.