Study On The Proverbs In The Literary Sketches

The literary sketch, which included many useful matters, is one of the important language materials. The proverbs in literary sketches had many unique features and to a great degree, it could stand for the oral characteristics of the language materials in that time when the literary sketch was written out in the case. The studies on the proverb were very poor among the studies on the history of Chinese language, and the monographic study in the concrete scope was fewer. The study will be useful for enriching the content of the history of Chinese language, compiling the dictionary of proverb, and writing literary works and literary criticisms. Base on collecting and arranging proverbs in the literary sketches from Han and Wei dynasty to Yuan and Ming dynasty, this paper depicted and explained systematically them, approached their specific characteristics, and settled their laws in the development.The preface discussed simply some relative questions of literary sketches and the proverbs and looked back briefly the condition of previous studies.The external form of the proverb was neat. The sound structures of the proverb concluded three facts: rhythm, level and oblique tone, and rhyming. They didn't keep the balance of development. It was not stricter to ask for observing laws of level and oblique tones than to ask for the laws of rhythms and rhyming. The forms of rhyming were more energetic than that of the ancient poems. There were many various grammatical structures of the proverbs, such as the simple sentence, the composite sentence, the multiplex sentence, and compressed sentence, and then it had almost complete types which are in oral language.The content of the proverbs in the literary sketches that contained all kinds of knowledge was very rich. But there were some choices to use types and matters, because of the positions and writing interesting of authors of the literary sketches. The proverbs had the external meaning and the deep meaning. A proverb often had only an external meaning, because people would acquire compete knowledge through a proverb. The deep meaning wasappeared through the methods of metaphor and extending. People had different angles and perceptions when recognizing an objective matter, so the synonymous proverb and the antonymous proverb were appeared, and they could embody the richness in meanings of proverbs.In the concrete context of situation, the proverbs in literary sketches had different grammatical function. It could act as a factor of a sentence group, a factor of a composite sentence, and a factor of a simple sentence, and so on. In a sentence group, the proverb had function of commanding, continuing and concluding. In a composite sentence, the relation between the proverb and other clauses was compound relation or subordinate relation. In a simple sentence, the proverb could act as subject, predicate, object, and attribute. It was a developing process that the proverb acted as a factor of a simple sentence, therefore the time was later, its function was more. Since the proverb was expressive, it didn't act as the adverb and the complement.'The source of proverbs in literary sketches on the document were various kinds, such as Confucian classics, philosophic books in era before Qin, history works, literary works in general, and documents of religion, and so on. This paper concluded the modes of developments, which contained word substitution, structural change, meaning development, and using indiscriminately of form. Studying with an individual case over ten proverbs and approaching the processes of their development, were also discussed in this paper.The culture has a very close relation to the language. Once there was a change in the culture, there was a corresponding change in word, and the change would have an effect on the production and the development of the proverb. At last, this paper simply discussed the influences on political systems, philosophy, religion, manner and custom, medical science, and drink and food.