A Study On Historical Development Of Hypothetical Conjunctions In Pre-qin Chinese

The pre-qin period is the initiation period in the history of Chinese conjunctions and the initial construction period of the hypothetic conjunctions system.The study of the historical evolution of hypothetic conjunctions in pre-qin Chinese can help to construct the hypothetic conjunctions system in pre-qin Chinese,reveal the historical evolution law of hypothetic conjunctions,and deepen the study on the function and ch aracteristics of conjunctions.The research object of this paper is the pre-qin Chinese hypothetical conjunction.This paper selectively investigates the use of hypothetical co njunctions in some handed down documents and unearthed documents.We try to des cribe the general situation of the hypothetic conjunctions system in pre-qin Chinese,analyze the origin and formation of hypothetic conjunctions in this period,and discus s the characteristics and causes of the diachronic evolution of hypothetic conjunctions in pre-qin Chinese.This paper is mainly composed of the following five parts:The introduction mainly introduces the research status of hypothetic conjunctions in pre-qin Chinese in five aspects:some functional word monographs,handed down 1 iterature,unearthed literature,case studies on hypothetic conjunctions,and thematic studies on grammar related to hypothetic conjunctions and hypothetic complex sentences.In addition,the part briefly introduces the significance of the research on the historical evolution of hypothetical conjunctions in pre-qin Chinese,the research methods adopted and the scope of the literature material.The first chapter,based on literature characteristics and research needs,the selected corpus is divided into three stages:the early stage of the pre-qin Chinese(from the Shang Dynasty to the Western Zhou Dynasty),the middle stage of pre-qin Chinese(from the Spring and Autumn period to the early Warring States Period),and the late stage of pre-qin Chinese(from the middle Warring States Period to the Qin Dynasty).We made statistics on the use of hypothetical conjunctions in the handed down literature and unearthed literature in each stage of pre-qin Chinese.It is found that the re are 9 monosyllabic hypothetic conjunctions and 14 disyllabic hypothetic conjunctions in the whole pre-qin Chinese.This chapter analyzes the different usage of hypoth etical conjunction syntactically and semantically.It mainly involves such aspects as syntactic position,connected structure,fixed collocation,sentence category,degree of semantic hypothesis and final mood of sentence.It can be found that the hypothetic conjunctions "Nai,Ruo,Gou,Shi,Ruo Shi" are widely distributed in each stage and have a high degree of flexibility in use.The second chapter,according to the part of speech of the source words,this part divides the above monosyllabic hypothetic conjunctions into two categories:notiona 1 words and function words.Also,according to the semantic relationship,we divided the 14 disyllabic hypothetic conjunctions into two categories:combination of synony ms and combination of different meanings.Then we briefly discussed the formation process and causes of the usage of the hypothetic conjunctions,and finds that the monosyllabic hypothetic conjunctions are mostly derived from the grammaticalization,a nd the disyllabic hypothetic conjunctions are mostly formed by combining adjacent words.The formation of hypothetic conjunctions is mainly composed of semantic bleach,syntactic change,hypothetic context,pragmatic function,lexicalization,and high-frequency monosyllabic hypothetic conjunctions.The third chapter,we summarize the characteristics of the diachronic evolution of pre-qin hypothetic conjunctions in terms of quantity,form,syntax and semantics.It is found that the number of pre-qin hypothetic conjunctions is on the rise,monosylla bic hypothetic conjunctions are stable in development,and "Ruo","Gou" and "Ru" have been used all the time.But the development of disyllabic hypothetic conjunctions are assumed to be unstable,only "Ruo Shi" continues to be used.In the form,it is assumed that the conjunctions show a trend of disyllabic development,but as the Pre-qin period is the early stage of the development of Chinese vocabulary,the life cycle of disyllabic hypothetic conjunctions is assumed to be short.In the syntactic position,the assumed conjunctions are generally placed at the beginning of the hypothesis complex sentences,and the proportion in front of the subject is increasing,but each hypothetic conjunction is different.In the connected structure,it is assumed that the usage of conjunctions becomes complicated.The early stages are dominated by conjunctions and sentences.But in the middle and late stages,the frequency of phrases and sentences increases.In the fixed collocation,the number of examples of fixed collocation increases,and some fixed sentence patterns can be develop steadily.Among the frequently used related words are "Ze,Bi,Jiang,Sui" and so on.In the sentence category,the sentence patterns of the hypothetic conjunctions are more and more abundant,ordinary hypothetical complex sentences are the main sentence patterns.In addition,it can be seen that the degree of semantic assumption of the hypothetic conjunctions are gradually increasing.Furthermore,the degree of virtual and unrealizability of the assumptions are being enhanced.However,the degree of semantic hypothesis in unearthed literature is less,and there are no examples that cannot be realized.From the perspective of the mood of the result sentence derived from the hypothetic conjunctions,the uncertainty degree of the result is gradually increasing.In the end,this chapter also discusses the diachronic evolution of pre-qin hypothetic conjunctions.The reasons for the evolution of pre-qin hypothetic conjunctions are illustrated from three aspects:word competition,complexity of use demand and complexity of use environ ment.The conclusion briefly summarizes the main conclusions of this paper.Moreover,this part points out the existing problems,and also indicates that the research depth of the paper still needs to be strengthened.