Studies Of The Complex Sentence And Assume That Conjunctions Of The Middle Chinese Hypothesis

Hypothetical complex sentences are a kind of more complicated complex sentence pattern, and the usage of hypothetical conjunctions in Medieval Chinese is complicated too. But they have not been researched much enough, and there are many problems to resolve. I try to do some research about them in medieval Chinese through this paper.The paper is mainly about the following four aspects:Firstly, hypothetical complex sentences and hypothetical conjunctions are identified, and the grammatical functions of "zhe(者)" and "ze(则)" in hypothetical complex sentences are analyzed in chapter one.Secondly, in chapter two, a survey of the usage of hypothetical conjunctions in medieval Chinese is precisely analyzed, and then the whole situation of hypothetical conjunctions is described at medieval time in China. Meanwhile, the regularity of internal combination of double-syllable hypothetical conjunctions is found.Thirdly, the combined patterns of hypothetical complex sentences are arranged, and the characteristics of the situation of the single-syllable hypothetical conjunctions are analyzed. It is found that the single-syllable hypothetical conjunctions have different pragmatic features when they are in different places in hypothetical complex sentences. For example, the subject that is followed a hypothetical conjunction means a new piece of information; and if the subject lies before a hypothetical conjunction, it is often the focus of the talking and always can be omitted.Lastly, I begin to search for the origins of some hypothetical conjunctions in medieval Chinese. Concessive hypothetical conjunctions are mainly from the words which express emphatic tones; and causal relation ones are mainly from the words with doubt tones. Additionally, some pragmatic features of the hypothetical conjunctions are generalized here. For example, the evidential quantities of more than half of hypothetical conjunctions like"shi(使)"and "ling(令)"are zero. The evidential quantities of hypothetical conjunctions like "tang(傥)", "tuo(脱)" and "she(设)" are lower.