Study Of Judgement Sentence In "The Sutra Of Hui Heng

"The Sutra of Hui Neng" is a significant Zen Buddhist work published in the late Tang Dynasty. The spoken language of this work reflects the language development of its age. Thus the study of this book has great value to the research of Chinese language development from ancient times through to the mediaeval age. In this book judgement sentences are very frequently used and their structures are very complex. This paper intends to statistically analyse and classify the specific characteristics of these structures. Based on the above study, \ve are able to generalize the nature of that time's judgement sentences and offer a few references for further research into Chinese language history.The judgement sentence in ancient Chinese language is, in short, a sentence in which the predicate, usually a noun or a noun phrase defines the subject, so that a judging relation forms between them. Such judgement sentences occur in 'The Sutra of Hui Neng" with 184 times. These are divided into five types according to theirstructural differences. The five sentence types are; 'zhe....,.....ye", 'wer, 'fei', \ji"and 'shi'. Of these the "shi" structure is the most complicated because of continuing debate among researches of ancient Chinese language history regarding its origin and development. This thesis, in correspondence with Mr. Sun Xixing's viewpoint, argues that the ancient judgement sentences were usually devoid of "xici" (copulative, linking verb, the verb 'to be'). "Xici" gradually came into use of a long period of time.The judgement sentences in this book, according to semantic analysis, show few distinctions to those of modern Chinese. They also express equivalence, classification and judgement.The use of judgement sentences in this work is widespread. The sentence structure and meaning of these judgement sentences is flexible, rich and characteristic of this type of sentence. Furthermore the predicate as used in this work becomes more complicated. The Use of the "ye" structure is less common and a new type of negative judgement sentence appears.In order to find the essence of the judgement sentences in this book, they have been taken out and compared with those that occur in other Buddhist Sutra As '"The Sutra of Hui Neng" is a book aimed at disseminating and teaching Buddhist doctrine, it uses a lot of spoken language and therefore reflects the oral style characteristic of the ancient Chinese language and is an important document for the further study of ancient Chinese oral language.With the above discussion, a conclusion can be drawn that the specific characteristics of the structure types and the semantics of the judgement sentences that occur in "The Sutra of Hui Neng", not only summarize their features, but also indicate their development from ancient times through to the mediaeval age.