Studies On The Valence Of Monosyllabic Verbs In Discussions About Salt And Iron

This article aims for studying the problem of verbs' valence in the ancient Chinese language by using the theory of valence's expression from France. Discussions about Salt and Iron is a piece of important literature that appeared in Xihan period in which Chinese language greatly developed, and it has a great deal of language material and complicated verbs. This article tries to make an all-round exploration on 265 monosyllabic verbs which have representative places in Discussions about Salt and Iron, and groups them into 434 verb items according to the ins and the outs given language condition, and carries through a multidimensional review on the valence of monosyllabic verbs. Firstly, according to the semantic characteristics, verbs can be classified into action verb, state verb, relation verb and modal verb. And then, on semantic role (semantic valence) and syntax plane (syntax argument), based on a thorough analysis and description of the valence, that is, the association function of the verbs, 434 monosyllabic verbs can be grouped into monovalent unilateralism verb, bivalent unilateralism verb, bivalent bidirectional verb, quasi bivalent and quasi bidirectional verb, trivalent tridirectional verb, trivalent bidirectional verb, trivalent unilateralism verb, quasi trivalent and quasi bidirectional verb. In these 8 types of verbs, bivalent bidirectional verbs are the most one, having 298 items which account for 68.6% of total amount; then monovalent unilateralism verbs have 69 items accounting for 15.8%; quasi bivalent and quasi bidirectional verbs have 25 items accounting for 5.7%; quasi trivalent and quasi bidirectional verbs are the least one only having 3 items and accounting for 0.6%. Finally, based on this Statistic, we redact a dictionary on the valence of monosyllabic verbs for Discussions about Salt and Iron.