On The Vocabulary Of Literary Sketches Of The Ming Dynasty

Chinese civilization has a long history.In its development process,language is not only an important communication and thinking tool,but also plays an important role in recording and inheriting civilization.The Chinese language has experienced the development and change from ancient times to modern times.The Ming Dynasty was in the middle and late period of recent Chinese vocabulary development.Literary sketches of the Ming Dynasty either take literary words or take the colloquial words as the carrier.The colloquial words are literature data which are highly close to the spoken language of that time.So literary sketches of the Ming Dynasty do have very high values in language research.This thesis will take the vocabulary of the 97 elaborately elected Ming Dynasty literary sketches as the main research object,built the corpus,review the Ming Dynasty Chinese vocabulary system,investigate the Ming Dynasty literary sketches vocabulary features,summarize the rules and characteristics of literary sketches vocabulary evolution,trace the factors gestated in Chinese vocabulary of the Ming Dynasty for the future development into modern Chinese vocabulary.The aim of this thesis is to enrich the achievements of Chinese vocabulary research in the Ming Dynasty.The vocabulary structure of literary sketches of the Ming Dynasty has the following four characteristics: first,all words in Ming Dynasty literary sketches can be divided into simple words,derivative and compound words.The vocabulary structure of the Ming Dynasty literary sketches is basically consistent with that of modern Chinese vocabulary.Second,the free morphemes in the Ming Dynasty are changed into bound morphemes in modern Chinese,which shows that the independence of the free morphemes has been diluted.Third,the words with same morphemes in different order in Ming Dynasty literary sketches confirm that the formation of derivatives and compound words in the Ming Dynasty were still in an unstable period,mainly manifested in the instability of the order of morphemes.Fourth,the diachronic evolution of the simple word collocation in the Ming Dynasty literary sketches shows that the syntactic function of the Ming Dynasty vocabulary has both inheritance and innovation.The vocabulary of Ming Dynasty literary sketches can be divided into spoken words,ancient words,dialect words,loanwords,argots,idioms and vocational words.The spoken words appear less frequently,but most spoken words are used in modern Chinese.Dialect words show the regional differences of Chinese vocabulary in the Ming Dynasty.Loanwords are the result of the contact between Chinese vocabulary and foreign languages and minority languages in the Ming Dynasty.Due to its privacy,group and colloquial nature,the argots have added some characteristics to the Chinese vocabulary in the Ming Dynasty.Idioms perform the function of words in the form of fixed structures.All the spoken words,ancient words,dialect words,loanwords,argots,idioms and vocational words were inherited and developed in the Ming Dynasty.The relationships between the morpheme meaning and the word meaning are the equal relationship,the partial meaning relationship,the extension relationship,the metaphor relationship and the borrowing relationship.Single meaning words can participate in the formation of new words meanings in the form of morphemes meanings.Polysemants always have a basic meaning,and other meanings are produced by the basic meaning by means of extension,metaphor and borrowing.In the literary sketches of the Ming Dynasty,simple words have many meanings.When they were used as morphemes,they often took only one of the meanings.Most of the compound words were originally the words with only one meaning.The relationships of synonyms in the Ming Dynasty are constantly changing.The relationships of antonyms are relatively stable.In the literary sketches of the Ming Dynasty,the vocabulary about political system,the imperial examination system,the emperors' and the ministers' posthumous titles,industry and commerce,clothing,legal system,festival customs,transportation,weddings and funerals,shows that the creation and use of the words in the Ming Dynasty literary sketches are the reflection of political,economic,cultural development and innovation in the Ming Dynasty.The Chinese vocabulary in Ming Dynasty not only has the historical accumulation of ancient Chinese and recent Chinese vocabulary components,but also has the germination of modern Chinese vocabulary.In the text of Ming Dynasty literary sketches,literary words and colloquial words with the same or similar meanings are often used at the same time.Many compound words belonging to colloquial words are produced by literary words as morphemes,so the compound words formation process of colloquial words in Ming Dynasty is not unrelated to literary words.This is also a manifestation of the changing of the literary words being easy to be understood in the Ming Dynasty.Literary words and colloquial words are not one language replacing another language,but the position change of two different language forms within the same language.The continuity of the development of Chinese vocabulary reflects the cultural and spiritual connotation of the Chinese nation,that is life and growth in nature.The law of vocabulary evolution in Ming Dynasty literary sketches has the following enlightenment for the development of modern Chinese vocabulary: first,the stronger the vitality of language,the faster the speed of vocabulary development.Second,the development of vocabulary must experience the internal metabolism of vocabulary.Third,keeping up with the current national strategy of carrying forward traditional culture,the development of modern Chinese vocabulary can't completely discard literary words.Based on the systematic investigation of the vocabulary and its development characteristics of the Ming Dynasty literary sketches,this thesis expects to make up for the deficiency of Chinese vocabulary research in Ming Dynasty and enrich the research achievements on recent Chinese.