The Study Of Trisyllables In Modern Chinese

The Chinese language has gone through several stages of development in respect of syllables. In ancient Chinese language, monosyllables played the leading role, while disyllables dominated the modern times. However, during the last decade, with the progress of society, economy and culture, new words have emerged in abundance in the contemporary Chinese language, many of them revealing a tendency of going trisyllabic. It is thus clear that trisyllables assume an increasingly important part in the contemporary Chinese language, and more importance need to be attached to them. Based on the theories of the language form, the laws of coinage and word formation, as well as structural items, and adopting the method of combination of description and illustration, synchrony and diachrony, and quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, this paper conducts a study on trisyllables in the contemporary Chinese language, analyzes their features from the angle of structural and grammatical function and then categorizes them into different types, and further explores into the causes of each type. Trisyllables include trisyllable words and trisyllable phrases. In terms of word formation, trisyllable words consist of single-morpheme words and compound words. Compound words take either the combined form or affixed form, or they can also be categorized into modifying, subject-predicate, verb-object, paratactic, supplemental, overlapping and affixed types in the aspect of structure. Structurally speaking, trisyllable words are endowed with asymmetrical beauty, while rhetorically speaking, they enjoy diversified image colors, rich emotional colors, and affixation. Ttrisyllable phrases refer to three-syllable phrases (idioms), which will be analyzed and interpreted in terms of semantic composition and rhetorical function. Three-syllable phrases have the following three main characteristics: 1) In respect of source, three-syllable phrases root in our real life, the majority of them being spoken language or dialects and leaving a fresh, vivid, lively, concise and crisp impression, which lays the foundation for its wide spread; 2) Seen from the grammatical structure, three-syllable phrases are mainly verb-object phrases composed of three syllables; 3) Regarding the effect of expression, three-syllable phrases usually have the effect of embodying the complex into the simple, economy and vividity. The real meanings of phrases are revealed through rhetorical means including metaphor, void numerical reference, metonymy, hyperbole and so on. The emergence of trisyllables can mainly be attributed to such causes as social impact, social development, the need of daily communication, internal factors of language and so on.