On The Personal Pronouns In The New Edition Of Tales From The Five Dynasties

The New Edition of Tales from the Five Dynasties, with high Corpus Value, plays a key role in modern Chinese. The study of the personal pronouns enables the reader to understand the general characteristic of personal pronouns deriving from the combination of classical Chinese and modern Chinese in Song and Yuan Period.The personal pronouns discussed in this paper are classified into the first person, the second and the third. In the Introduction, the author explains the reason of choosing such a topic, the literal review of The New Edition of Tales from the Five Dynasties, and the methods applied in this paper. In the Body, on the limitless range of possible sources of pronouns, the paper mainly discussed the pronouns used in The New Edition of Tales from the Five Dynasties, applying the combination of description and explanation, of the synchronic and the diachronic, of the qualitative and the quantitative analysis.This paper studies the functions and semantic characteristics of the first personal pronouns including wo(我), wu(吾), zan (咱), yu (予), zhen (朕), an (俺), the second personal pronouns comprising nin (您), ni (你), er (尔), ru (汝), nen (恁) and the third personal pronouns consisting of ta (他), zhi (之) , qi (其), bi (彼), ta (它), yi (伊) respectively. In addition, the paper, on the basis of Mr. Wu Fuxiang's study of personal pronouns in Tun-huang Narratives, compares the personal pronouns in the Five Dynasties with those in Tang Dynasty. Through comparison and contrast, the paper points out the personal pronouns in The New Edition of Tales from the Five Dynasties, combining modern and classical Chinese, thus form a lexical system with a rich temporal gradation. The grammar and function of Wo (我), Ni (你) and Ta (他)has grown mature and entered to the modern Chinese. While the appearance of Zan (咱) and Nin (您) , as well as the wide use of Ta (他) represents that the collocation of personal pronouns in modern Chinese is tending to perfect. The common way to indicate the plural form of a personal pronoun is to add Men (们) afterwards. However the expression of the plural form is not strict and standard. For example, in some cases , Deng(等) , Cao(曹) and Bei(辈) are used after the personal pronoun, Nin (您)does not necessarily express respect , and Ta (它)is only used to refer to men not animals, all of which are different from the modern Chinese.