The Syntax Study Of The Two Years Law In The Bamboo Slips Buried In The Han Dynasty Tomb In Zhang Jiashan

After the Bamboo slips buried in the Han Dynasty tomb in Zhang Jiashan was unearthed, a research boom has been immediately set off among academics with various results emerging. However, most of the studies are mainly focus on the legal and historical aspects. By contrast, studies in the language field are relatively weak, especially those from the aspect of grammar. Thus, this paper takes the Two Years Law as the research object to study this book’s grammar and makes a comprehensive and systematical analysis of its syntactic features. The paper is divided into the following five chapters:Chapter one is the introduction which mainly introduces the excavation and sorting of the Bamboo slips buried in the Han Dynasty tomb in Zhang Jiashan, the research survey of the Two Years Law as well as the research value and methods of the paper.Chapter Two is the study on the Verb-Resultative Construction (VRC), which examined all the VRC in the Two Years Law and figured out sentences with the verbs("杀"kill、"伤"hurt、"折"break、"得") as complement. What’s more, argumentation is conducted for that the word "杀""kill" contains the meaning of death and the grammaticalization of this word is explored in this chapter. By combing the text on the Bamboo slips with the thea theory, this chapter discusses three important questions about the VRC. At the same time, a horizontal research is being conducted which combines the features of VRC in the "Historical Records to make an argumentation on the primordial period of VRC. The conclusion is that VRC has been produced in the Han Dynasty but was not yet mature. The feature is that the complement contains a result and bears the meaning of action but the "V·C·O" structure has not formed. Complements of this period were more related with war and punishment and in a close relationship with social life.Chapter Three is study (a) on single sentences. In this chapter, the verbs in verb Predicate Sentences are divided into six categories and relevant explanations are given. What’s more the sentences are divided into13types. After analysis, it is found that verbs in single sentences are mostly monosyllabic. The predicate structure is simple and the modified ingredients for predict are relatively concentrated. The subject structure is more complex and with more fixed sentence patterns. Meanwhile, this chapter makes an analysis on sentences with noun predicts, subject-predicate sentences and judgment sentences.Chapter Four is study (b) on single sentences. The unique style of the Two Years Laws leads to that there are a lot of patient-subject sentences in the text of Bamboo slips. The features of such sentences are as following:The verb predicate is usually followed by no object which is implied in the meaning. The verbs are closely related to the patient subject. There are no marks of action in such sentences. Most of the subjects refer to criminal acts or perpetrators which bear the same important position as predicates. Most of the sentence patterns are:Subject (perpetrator/specific criminal acts)+predicate(punishment). An analysis of four causes of patient-subject sentences is made by means of Modern Chinese Topic Theory,"Three Surfaces "Theory and Grammaticalization theory. The analysis of elliptical sentences is on four types including the ellipsis of subject, predicate, object and preposition. The elliptical sentences can highlight information, reflect the simplicity of language and connect textual features, which is also the main reason why such sentences are used.Chapter Five is study on complex sentences. This chapter mainly makes an analysis and classification of the parallel complex sentences, coherent complex sentences, hypothetical sentences and concessive complex sentences. There is more analysis of parallel and transferring complex sentences compared with analysis of sentences of other types. Fewer conjunctive words are used in complex sentences and the connection between clauses is mainly parataxis. There is a unique feature of the complex sentences in the bamboo slips. That is, there are specified audiences, specifications, shapes and so on for the same event or regulations. This is quite different from that of simple sentences which condense many laws in one sentence. This may result from the features of legal instruments, which is to avoid ambiguity and loopholes thus conducting the smooth implementation of law.Exhaustive statistics is applied in this paper and database tools are used for analysis for the resorting and classification of various sentences. The study is from a static level and trying to make a vertical and horizontal comparison with other literatures like Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips unearthed the tomb and Historical Records. At the same time, dynamic studies are made by combing the Modern Chinese relevant theories from several levels including syntactic, semantics and pragmatics to make an integrated exploration. Thus some views are put forward.