Study On The Structure Of "Zhi" In Strategies Of The Warring States

The Strategies of the Warring States is a national style history book,which records diplomatic exchanges and brilliant speeches of advisers or wise men during the warring states period.It has left many long-standing idioms and stories deeply rooted in the hearts of the people,which have far-reaching influence.Taking the Strategies of the Warring States as the research object,this paper explores the meaning and usage of structure of "Zhi" in it.The structure of "Zhi" here refers to the structure formed by inserting a conjunction "Zhi"between two linguistic elements with subject-predicate relationship or between the body part of speech and a prepositional phrase related to it.For the convenience of narration,the front part of"Zhi" in the structure of "Zhi" is called the former part,and the back part of "Zhi" is called the latter part.The structure of "Zhi" is a common structure in ancient Chinese.It appeared as early as Zhouyi,flourished in the Han Dynasty and gradually decreased in the Middle Ages,and became a special linguistic phenomenon.According to the difference of the latter part in the structure of "Zhi",this paper divides the structure of "Zhi" into three categories:verbal-latter,adjective-latter and prepositional-latter.When discussing the internal semantic relationship of the structure of "Zhi",we focus on the verbal-latter and adjective-latter categories,which form the subject-predicate relationship between the former and the latter.According to the semantic relationship between the former and the latter,we divide the internal semantics of the structure into three categories:the former is the agent of the latter,the former is the object of the latter and the former is the non-agent or object of the latter,and discuss the proportion of the various semantic relations within the structure of "zhi" in The Strategies of the Warring States.It holds that the main function of the structure of "zhi" is to be an object,the secondary function is to be a subject and a compound clause,and the last function is to be a predicate of a judgment sentence and a single sentence.This paper divides the predicates that can be connected with the object of "Zhi"structure into two categories:predicate-object verbs and prepositions.According to semantics,predicates are classified into perceptual activities,psychological activities,speech,analogy,judgement,dependency and other categories.According to the comparison of the average value,it is concluded that although the number of other categories is much more than the judgement verbs,the ability and quality of other categories are much lower than the judgement verbs.In the example sentences of structure of "zhi" as complex clauses,the largest number is causal complex sentences.Our guess is that the long-term collocation of modal particles "zhe" and "ye" with the structure expressing cause and effect results in the ability to express cause and effect in use.The characteristics of complex sentences and the structure of "Zhi" make them collocate with "zhe" and "ye",so the number of causal complex sentences is more than other types.We have made statistics on the distribution of the syntactic functions of the "zhi"structure in the three documents of The Strategies of the Warring States,Zuozhuan and Lunheng.The data show that the main grammatical function of the structure of"zhi"in the three literature is to act as object,then as subject and compound clause,and finally as predicate and single sentence.By the Eastern Han Dynasty,the activity of the structure of "Zhi" was greatly reduced,and the frequency of its occurrence was also greatly reduced.This paper analyses the nature of the structure of "Zhi" from five aspects,and holds that it is a predicate structure.Firstly,it negates the view that the structure of"Zhi" is a nominal structure because of its syntactic function as subject and object.Secondly,it is noticed that the predicate consists of predicate-object verb and preposition when the structure of "Zhi" is used as object,and the adjunct predicate-object is one of the main functions of the predicate-object verb and preposition.From this point of view,we think that the structure of "Zhi" has the possibility of being a predicate structure.Thirdly,because the structure of "Zhi" has the function of serving as the adverbial core,it can be modified by adverbial,and adver’bial head is predicate,so the structure of "Zhi" should be predicate.Finally,we analyze the internal relations and external environment of the structure of "Zhi"separately,and find that the latter part of the structure of "Zhi"still retains the predicate feature,and the part of the exemplification is also the predicate structure,so we think that the structure of "Zhi",is the predicate structure.This paper also discusses the effect of "Zhi",on the structure of "Zhi" from three aspects:grammar,semantics and punctuation.It holds that "Zhi" is a conjunction,which condenses the antecedents and antecedents of the structure into a more stable module.It does not play a significant role in distinguishing meanings.It exists only as a marker to distinguish the relationship between sentence components and should be included in the punctuation rules of ancient writings.