"salt And Iron" Pronoun Study

The thesis of Salt and Iron was an argumentation written by Huankuan born in Runan, a satrap in Lujiang during Hanxuan Emperor reign of Han Dynasty. In fact it was a specialized book compiled according to a minute, which was finished in the end of Western Han Dynasty (Between BC66 to BC49). In spite of a minute the representatives of one part were officials delegated by Sanghongyang and those of the other part were some Confucian Scholars elected from commons. They were all high intellectuals at that time so they could cite the classics and have expression with literary talent. Therefore, on one hand, the Thesis of Salt and Iron was characterized by being paralleled and dual; on the other hand, it basically remained the feature of oral language at that time because of a record of some dialogue happened in a palace dispute. All that helped us to understand the general situation of ancient Chinese glossary and grammar at that time. This paper makes a deeply study of its pronouns to get the skeleton of development and changes of pronoun in the times of this article mentioned. This kind of study is always a complicated question. The dispute about whether the pronoun could be regarded as an independent part of words and what is its classification has ever been argued for a long time although the final conclusion has been obtained. The existing study on The Thesis of Salt and Iron mainly focused on the questions of politics, economy, national defenses and thoughts and morality reflected in it especially its idea of politics which still has practical significance today. The grammar and glossary was paid a little attention to without need to say its pronoun. This paper makes a quantitative and qualitative analysis to its four kinds of pronouns to study the development and changes of pronoun in transition from ancient times to mediaeval times. Firstly, the paper can give further understanding of conditions of pronoun in its development; secondly, it offers new materials for the whole study of Chinese; thirdly it help more exactly understand the ancient literature.This paper includes five chapters:Chapter one is the prolegomenon. It includes three aspects, the overview of the Thesis of Salt and Iron, the survey of the development of pronoun study and the version ground.Chapter two studies the function of three kinds of person pronouns so we can understand their development and changes in transition from ancient times to mediaeval times.Chapter three makes a overall research on the functions and usages of two types of denotation pronouns to know their development and changes in transition.Chapter four mainly discusses the question pronouns, especially the pronoun of'HE', pointing that more and more fixed usages of'HE'appeared from ancient times to mediaeval times.The last chapter is to study the uncertain pronouns'HUO'and'MO'from ancient times to mediaeval times. Although these pronouns seldom changed, some new usages appeared.