A Study Of Modal Particles In The Unearthed Pre-Qin Literature

The corpus that this thesis is based on is the unearthed Pre-Qin literature,including the oracle bone inscriptions,the ancient bronze inscriptions,bamboo slips and silk documents and jade characters.After collecting and sorting,we have extracted fifteen modal particles which are used in the end of sentences.First,modal particles�ye(?)��yi(?)��yi(?)��yan(?)��yi(?)��eryi(??)��er(?)��er(?)�express the declarative mood.Second,words�hu(?)��yu(?)��yi(?)��zhi(?)�express the interrogative mood.Third,�zai(?)��xi(?)��fu(?)�express the exclamatory mood.There are seven modal particles which are used in the middle of sentences.They are�ye(?)��yi(?)��yi(?)��yan(?)��er(?)��hu(?)��xi(?)�.By using the methods of quantitative statistics,inductive analysis,classification and comparison,this thesis makes a studyon modal particles'written forms,syntax and function.The first chapter is introduction.Firstly,it defines "tone","modal particle" and some other related conceptions,and it illustrates the relationship between the linguistic mood and modal particles.The modal particle is one of many means of expressing moods and tones,and it is much more important in written language.Secondly,this section sorts outprevious research results and making a brief review.Results of previous studies are fruitful,but their research methods,contents and some other aspects are relatively simple.Finally,it explains the use of the corpus and some relative terms in this thesis.The second chapter discusses the written forms of modal particles.Unlike the handed down literature,modal particles in the unearthed Pre-Qin literature always have many different written forms.The word �ye(?)� can be written as �?� or�(?)�.The word �yi(?)� can be written as �?��(?)��(?)��?��?��(?)�.�Yan(?)� can be written as �?��?��(?)��?�.�Hu(?)� can be written as �?��?��?��(?)��(?)��(?)�.�Yu(?)� can be written as �?��?��(?)��(?)��(?)��(?)�.And �zai(?)� can be written as �?��(?)��(?)��?��(?)�.In each group of these written forms,most of them have the same phonetic symbol and the same or similar pronunciations.The third chapter discusses the syntax of modal particles,including their positions in sentences,the syntactic components they attached to,their sentence type distribution,their combina-tion ability and other special syntactic phenomena.Modal particles at the end of sentences are mainly attached to nominal,verbal or adjective phrases.And the sentence types they appearedin including the narrative sentence,the judgment sentence,the descriptive sentence,the interrogative sentence,the imperative sentence,the exclamatory sentence and so on.The words �ye(?)��yi(?)� �yi(?)� are commonly used in the complex sentence.�Yi(?)��yi(?)��hu(?)� �zai(?)� appear in the subject predicate inversion sentence.And the word �zai(?)� also appears in the non-subject sentence.Modal particles in the middle of sentences are mainly attached to the syntactic elements such as subject,object,adverbial and attribute.Words �ye(?)� and �yi(?)�appear in the subject predicate inversion sentence.When modal particles are used in conjunction,their combination order is the declarative modal particlefist,then the interrogative modal particle,and last the exclamatory modal particle.The fourth chapter discusses the function of modal particles.When modal particles at the end of sentences are used solely,no matter what kind of sentence types they are used in,the moodsthat they express are always single.When they used in conjunction,they still express their original tones.And how they are used is affected by the complexity of the sentence mood and the internal relationships between modal particles.As for modal particles in the middle of sentences,their main function is to express the pause of moods,to indicate the importance of discourse information and to be the mark of theme.