A Study On The Time Category Of Bronze Inscriptions In The Zhou Dynasties

Time is the premise of the existence and development of all things. It exists objectively and no one can change it, but we are able to actively perceive it and express it through our languages. The time recording system not only reflects the culture of that time, but also contains rich linguistic and cultural connotations. Bronze inscriptions, whose historical span is much longer than that of oracle-bones inscriptions, consist of an important stage in the history of the development of Chinese characters. With the tireless efforts of a great many academic experts and scholars, significant achievements have been made in areas of word explanation, vocabulary, grammar and style analysis. However, a comprehensive and systematic exposition about the time of bronze inscriptions on the basis of linguistics has not been found yet. This thesis intends to analyze and summarize the time category of bronze inscriptions, and discuss its expressions in terms of time category.This thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter 1 is an introduction. It includes the definition of time category, the present research situation, the significance of the topic, and the research methodology.Chapter 2 is the study of time nouns. Generally, there are three kinds of time nouns in the bronze inscriptions:nouns of recording hours, nouns of recording days、months、 years, and nouns of recording the past, the present and the future. In this chapter, we will explain these time nouns one by one, calculate their amount of appearance, and then summarize and analyze their usage.Chapter 3 is the study of time adverbs. Time adverbs in the bronze inscriptions can be divided into two classes and seven sub-classes. The first one is used to express time sequence like’already’,’at the beginning’,’at present’,’in the future’and’forward or afterward’, etc. The other is used to express time status such as’fast or slowly’, ’chronically or temporarily’, etc. On the basis of this classification, we will explain these time adverbs one by one, and then summarize and analyze their usage.Chapter 4 is the study of time phrases. In this chapter, we will thoroughly analyze and discuss time phrases including subject-verb phrases, appositive phrases, subordinate phrases, prepositional objective phrases and’wei(唯)’-oriented phrases appeared in the bronze inscriptions.Chapter 5 is the study of age and geographical differences in the expression of time. In this chapter, we will use lists to summarize and analyze the expression of time in each period and nation, and to investigate the evolution features of the expression of time vertically and horizontally.