Study On Noun's Assertion In Zuo Zhuang

In Ancient Chinese language, an overlap between the grammatical functions of a noun and a verb is usually considered "word class shift" when the noun is present in predicative syntactic positions.Based on the results of previous research, the purpose of this thesis is to reinterpret this grammatical phenomenon "noun-verb functional overlap" from the perspective of "assertion", which is more extensive than "word class shift"."Assertion" is defined as a transformation process of Interpretation Function involving an N/NP that takes a predicate position. The process is based on relevant semantic, syntactic and pragmatic grounds.Analysis of this thesis is conducted with the Semantic Case as the key link. When a noun is used in a predicate position, a relevant predicative morpheme will be accordingly added or strengthened in the semantic structure of the assertion. The original semanteme of the noun bears different case relationships with the specific predicative morpheme.According to the case classification, together with the semantic characteristic distributions of selected nouns, I discover two distinctive assertion factors that play an important role in the assertion process of noun. The case distribution in different predicative positions corresponds to different degrees of assertion. Syntactic positions with more case categories accord with higher assertion degree and vice versa.There are three conditions that cause the assertion of noun:1)the assertion factors of noun itself,2) the requirements of specific syntactic positions, and 3)the pragmatic basis.These three conditions accord with three linguistic dimensions:lexicology, syntax and pragmatics, which suggest different assertion levels.Statistics of the term frequency in Zuo Zhuan(左传)show that the so-called "word class shift" in ancient Chinese language can be explored from the perspective of "Assertion". An amount of cases in Zuo Zhuan exemplify this specific linguistic basis, while other examples with low frequency of assertion utilization can be distinguished with the term of "flexible use". Assertion is the essence of the problem, analogy of which essentially leads to temporary flexible uses of noun. Also,its immobilization and phonetic changes in turn generate new words, which deserves and will be tested by future research in the field.Here, I will briefly introduce the structure of this thesis. Chapter 1 introduces the research background, with an overview of previous achievements in this field. Chapter 2 illustrates the methodologies and objects.Chapter 3 and 4 address case studies of selected materials from Zuo Zhuan, according to different syntactic positions.Chapter 5 summarizes major academic contribution of the thesis and makes the final conclusion.