The Historical Development Of The Adverb "Que"

At present, there is only sporadic discussion about the origins and evolution of the adverb "que" in the academic,scholars and experts have differences views on when the adverb"que" generated, the usage and the meaning of the adverb"que" compiled in the dictionaries are quite different. In view of this,this article adopted the methods which combined synchronic description and diachronic comparison, description and interpretation, quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis, to undertake a systematic study on the adverb"que" based on the investigation of some key corpus form Pre-Qin to the Qing Dynasty,comprehensively inspect the process of its formation and development,outlines the basic appearance of the adverb"que" in various times,reveal the relationship between the various usage, explore its grammaticalization path, accordingly have a systematic understanding of the historical sources, the systems of meaning and grammatical function of the adverb"que".With the hope that according to undertake a systematic study on the adverb"que",can provide some factual basis for systematic study on Chinese adverbs.According to the diachronic investigation, we find out the adverb"que" generated in late Eastern Han Dynasty, its first usage is used as time adverb which express "And then" meaning. Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, "que" derive the connection adverb usage in the foundation of the time adverb usage. Tang Wudai Dynasty, the adverb"que" added cumulative adverb and expression adverb two usage. Four usage of the adverb"que" continued to be used from the Tang Wudai Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, until Qing Dynasty,its usage moved toward the simplification, under combined action of external competition and internal competition, it only keeped the usage of connection adverb which show transition relations and the expression adverb usage, basic consistent with the usage of the adverb"que" in modern Chinese.