| As a short-lived dynasty in the history of China,Yuan Dynasty last less than one hundred years,but at the time,Chinese language was greatly influenced by Mongolian language.In addition,it inherited Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty on the one hand and opened Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty on the other,played a key role in the history of Chinese language development,especially in the history of Chinese quantifier development,the member of the commonly used quantifiers in Yuan Dynasty is quite close to that of the morden Chinese language.Among all kinds of literature of Yuan Dynasty,Southern Opera,a sort of ancient drama,which originated in Wenzhou in the late Northern Song Dynasty,was popular in the south China,reflecting the folk colloquialism,is indispensable to reflect the oral language of Yuan Dynasty.However,due to the scarcity of Southern Opera copies,the academic circle pays not enough attention to it,there is no special research achievement on the quantifiers of Southern Opera in the Yuan Dynasty.Thus,this thesis will make a systematic study on the quantifiers of Southern Opera in Yuan Dynasty from the synchronic and diachronic perspectives,using the method of comparative analysis actively.This thesis is divided into five chapters,and the last part is the conclusion.Here are the four key aspects of this thesis:In Chapter One and Chapter Two,the nominal quantifiers and momentum words in the Southern Opera of Yuan Dynasty are classified according to the semantic direction and grammatical function,combining with the other dynastic research achievements of the quantifiers in Yuan Dynasty,and mainly using the methods of comparative analysis and descripting selectively to compare the quantifiers of the Southern Opera in Yuan Dynasty with other quantifiers of Yuan Dynasty.All of this is to highlight the universality of the quantifiers of the Southern Opera of Yuan Dynasty in the synchronic level,and sort out a small part of quantifiers which show the characteristics of the Southern Opera.In Chapter Three,the dialect attribute of the quantifiers of the Southern Opera in Yuan Dynasty is defined by analyzing the characteristic words.First of all,a part of quantifiers of the Southern Opera which are dialect in modern Chinese language are selected,referring to the research achievements of modern Chinese dialects.Then compare to the other literature of the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty,especially the popular literature works like Zaju and Sanqu which represent the oral language of the north,for verifying the universality of these quantifiers and finally separeting the dialect quantifiers in Southern Opera,showing the regional characteristics of the Southern Opera in Yuan Dynasty.On the basis of Chapter Three,Chapter Four sorts out the dialect quantifiers in the Southern Opera of Yuan Dynasty,analyzes and sums up the factors that affected the diachronic evolution of the quantifiers between standard language and dialect,then probes into the essence of the diachronic evolution.In Chapter Five,we compare Zhang Xie Zhuang Yuan,one of the Southern Opera dramas of Song Dynasty,with the Southern Opera in Yuan Dynasty,to analyse the inderitance and difference between them.And we also analyse how often the quantifier ‘Ge’ was used in various popular literary works of Song Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty,to see if the difference of frequency is linked to different stylistic and regional levels. |
