| The Travels of Lao Can, written by Liu E in Guang Xu period, is known as one of the "four condemned novels" in late Qing dynasty. It mainly describes the protagonist Lao Can’s experiences and reflections on his travels as an itinerant doctor. There are a large number of dialogues with strong oral features in this novel, which reflects the social linguistic characters and grammar facts of that period. Therefore, this paper conducts a comprehensive research on the pronouns in The Travels of Lao Can so as to explore the change and development of personal pronouns in modern Chinese of that period.According to the specific use of pronouns in The Travels of Lao Can,we divide the pronouns into three categories:personal,demonstrative and interrogative pronouns.The personal pronoun mainly includes six classes:the first person,the second person,the third person,the reflexive and the side ones."Wo(我)”and“Wo men(我们)"are the main form of first person pronouns,and the usage of“an(俺)”,“an men(俺们)”,”zan(')”and“zan men('们)”shows distinct regional features."Ni(你)"and“ni men(你们)”occupy the highest frequency.The“ni(你)”in“ni er ren(你二人)”,showing both single and plural forms,appears multiple times in the text.What’s more,this novels employed“ning(儜)”for the first time.“Ta(他)”and“ta men(他们)”have obvious advantages in the use of the third person pronoun and the occurrence of"qi(其)"is gradually reduced.As for the reflexive pronouns,the usage of“zi(自)”is often combined with other words while the usage of“zi ji(自己)”is very complete.The use of side pronouns of“ren jia(人家)”is relatively higher than“bie ren(别人)”because of the large number of conversations in this novel.The pronoun"da jia(大家)"occupies a higher proportion as the subject.However,the application of“zhu wei(诸位)”is very limited and only eight cases can be found in the text.Considering the actual situation of the demonstrative pronouns in The Travels of Lao Can,we can put them into five small branches:proximal,far,side,one by one refer and refer to all.The proximal pronouns occur for 22 times in the forms of“zhe(这)”and“ci(此)”.Compared with"zhe(这)","nen(恁)"appears for only once in the text.As for the far pronoun,"na(那)"occupies obvious advantage over“bi(彼)”that appeared for only 12 times.What’s more,the use of“bie(别)”and“bie ren(别的)”as side pronouns enjoys the high proportion of 67.86 while“ling(另)”,“ling wai(另外)”and“qi yu(其余)”has much lower frequency but has similar grammatical functions to modern Chinese.In addition,"ge(各)”and“mei(每)"have a proportion up to 83.33%.Only five cases of“ge ge(个个)”are found in the novel."Yi qie(一切)"and“zhu(诸)”,as the pronouns referring to all,has a high frequency.However,there are few“suo you(所有)”and“yi ying(一应)”in the text,which have single grammatical function.The interrogative pronouns in The Travels of Lao Can are divided into eight branches: “shui(谁)”, “na(那)”, “he(何)”, “shen(甚)”, “zen(怎)”, “ji(几)”, “duo(多)” and “an(安)”. The "an(安)" that has an earlier origin has been gradually declined, and "he(何)", "zen(怎)" and "ji(几)" show a good trend of development.Based on the analysis and integration of pronouns in The Travels of Lao Can, we can see the pronoun system in the book has little difference with that of modern Chinese. Since The Travels of Lao Can was written in the late Qing Dynasty when it is in the transition period from modern Chinese to contemporary Chinese, the pronoun system in the novel has characteristics of both periods and it has been stabilized gradually. In addition, all kinds of pronouns in The Travels of Lao Can have clear and good grammatical functions and they have shown a tendency of systematization and form standardization. |
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