An Analysis Of "Yueyu Sentences" In Chinese

The sentence patterns "yue X yue Y","yue X, yue Y" and "yue lai yue Y" which contains two "yue"are used to express relational interaction in Chinese. Scholars have studied such sentence patterns multiple times prior to this thesis and have given different names to such patterns as "yue X yue Y" or "yue X, yue Y"etc. The naming or summarization of these sentence patterns-which contains Chinese character "yue"-is typical but has not been comprehensive so far, and thus, these definitions can not include every special sentence format which contains "yue". In view of this, I propose a new definition "Yue Zi Ju", to sum up and classify all these patterns into three categories:"Dan Yue Ju","Shuang Yue Ju" and "Duo Yue Ju". Among these-because of the complexity-shuang yue ju can be further classified into three sub-classes:condensed sentences, separated sentences and variant sentences. Therefore, I select classification of the common sentence patterns of "Yue Zi Ju"as the subject of my thesis.There are four parts in eight chapters in this paper.Part One, which is also the first chapter, is Introduction. Chapter one focuses on topics relevant to this thesis, for example, the definition of "Yue Zi Ju" is presented; the purpose, significance and objective of this research is explained; Also included in Chapter One are the achievements and shortcomings of former studies on this subject; the scope, methods and means of research; new ideas, source and reference material, explanation of symbols used in this paper, and so on.Part Two is "Diachronic Analysis of’Yue Zi Ju’in Ancient Chinese" which contains chapters Two and Three. These two chapters present detailed analysis of "Yue Zi Ju" in linguistic materials from different dynasties, such as, Southern Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing and Republic of China. These chapters also include the corpora and source of linguistic materials; forms of "Yue Zi Ju", especially the X and Y composition, and the number and proportion with which these forms of "Yue Zi Ju" appear within the source material; it’s grammatical functions, semantic relations and pragmatics features, and so on. According to the data and information I have searched, I point out that not later than Southern Song Dynasty has written materials used "Yue Zi Ju". Also, I present some charts and figures to support my ideas.Part Three contains Chapter Four to Chapter Seven, presenting mainly the "Synchronic Analysis of Yue Zi Ju’ in Modern Chinese". I have organized my analysis in four chapters and the contents of each chapter focus on a single aspect; the conformation of "yue...yue..."structure in Chapter Four, the structure of sub-categories of "Yue Zi Ju" in Chapter Five, the grammatical functions in Chapter Six, the semantic relations in Chapter Seven.This can be further described in details as follows:Chapter Four:The function of "yue" in part of the speech where words can act as "X" or "Y" in "yue...yue..."structure and the collocations of "X" and "Y" such as "yue+verb+yue+verb".Chapter Five:Categorization of condensed sentences, separated sentences and variant sentences into sub-classes from structure and component point of view and general analysis based on special cases of condensed sentences and variant sentences.Chapter Six:Illustration of the functions of structures such as "yue X yue Y","yue X","yue Y", which can work in "yue...yue..." structure.Chapter Seven:Analysis of the semantic relations of "yue...yue..."syntactical structure, interaction relationships implied in "yue...yue..." sentences and what conditions or characteristics ’X’ and Y’ have when they are in "yue...yue..." structure, and so on.The fourth and final part is Chapter Eight which summarizes all aspects of this study. I have divided this chapter into two sections:Section One is the conclusion of Part Two (Chapters2and3) while Section Two is the conclusion of Part Three (Chapters4to7). This summary covers all the main aspects of this thesis while addressing the limitations of this research.