Research On Selective Questions In "Chun A Shi"

Chun E is a novel based on a real murder case in Late Qing Dynasty.The novel is written in Beijing dialect,and published in 1911-1912AC.It has recorded the whole trial process about the murder case,including dialogues between the judge,the suspect and other people involved.Therefore it contains plenty of interrogative sentences,especially Alternative Questions in various structures and forms.This paper has made a thorough examination and analysis about all the Alternative Questions in Chun E,which makes it a significant part of the research of Chun E as well as a useful reference material of the comprehensive study about Alternative Questions in Late Qing Dynasty.This paper begins with a brief introduction of the reasons why we choose this topic,along with the train of thought about how we carry on the study and the theory and methods we used during the research.A review of the general study situation about Chinese interrogative sentences and Chun E is also a main content of this part.In the next part,we classified the Alternative Questions in Chun E into two types,Parallel Questions and Repeated Questions.Both types are comprised of different sentence patterns.According to the number ofForm Marker in each sentence pattern,we made a further classification,Single-form-marker Alternative Questions and Multiple-form-marker Alternative Questions,to build a clear and systematic cognition about the Alternative Questions in Chun E.In the third part,we compared the Alternative Questions in Chun E with three other contemporary books,they are Ernv Yingxiong Zhuan,Guanhua Zhinan and Xiao E.This synchronic comparison included four aspects,the Sentence Pattern,the Form Marker,the Question Focus,and the Pragmatic Function.On this basis,we analyzed their commonness and characters by the theory and methods of pragmatics,cognitive linguistics and linguistic typology.In the last part of this paper,we made a diachronic comparison about the similarities and differences of the Alternative Questions among Ancient Chinese,Middle-ancient Chinese,Modern Chinese and Contemporary Chinese.we proposed some tentative explanations about these language phenomenon,and accordingly drew the broad outline of the development of Alternative Questions in Chinese history.