Study Of Phrases Including “者” In Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Texts

This paper analyzes all the "者" and phrases including "者" in Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts as well as in some other received documents, and comes to the conclusion that "者" has three parts of speech:Pronoun, particle, and modal particle. "者" as pronoun can introduce a relative clause which modifies a noun or noun phrase that functions as the topic, or the subject, or the object of the main sentence. This kind of relative clause marked by "者" has been seen as "postpositive adjective" in traditional Chinese grammar study. Relative clause exists in many languages as well as in Chinese. This paper argues that it is more reasonable to look on phrases including "者" as relative clause and "者" as relative pronoun, which also helps better explain the nominalization of the structure VP+者."者" as particle appears at the end of a conditional clause and expresses hypothetical situations. From this perspective we could consider a relative clause marked by "者" as a conditional clause too, giving the idea that this kind of relative clause resembles a conditional clause both at the surface and in the meaning. Due to this semantic similarity, when the surface structure remains unchanged, the reanalysis of "者" and the relative clause it marks occurs. The weakening of the reference of pronoun "者" also promotes the transformation of relative pronoun "者" to particle "者" at the end of a conditional clause. The grammaticalization of "者" thus completes with the change of the deep structure of the sentence, by which particle "者" is formed.As "者" loses its lexical meaning, it becomes a modal particle and appears in the place of topic taken by temporal nouns and nouns, indicating a pause. This paper considers it as topic marker. There is a close connection among relative pronoun "者", conditional marker "者" and topic marker "者", the latter two are generated from the first through certain grammaticalization.The three types of "者" as well as the relative clause, conditional clause and topic-comment sentence marked by the different "者" all appear in Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts. Among them, the relative clause introduced by "者" comes in various types and the structure tends to be complicated. The place of the topic in topic-comment sentence is filled by nominal phrases, verbal phrases, clauses, temporal nouns or nouns. The various functions of "者" can be seen quite clearly.In addition, pronoun "者" also can introduce a relative clause. This paper also discusses the complementary distribution of "者" and "者".