Modal Particles Of The Yuan Dynasty

There are Zajus of the Yuan Dynasty beyond number with different anthologies having been handed down to this day. The research on them by the field-related predecessors is mostly confined to literature research and verification of the authors, leaving linguistic research a still comparatively new field. Although the predecessors have already done some research into the modal particle in Zaju of the Yuan Dynasty, the problem is that their research is often based on one kind of anthology which provides a foundation of the description of certain modal particles' usage and the characteristics, and it lacks a clear understanding of a full view of modal particle system and its characteristics.On the basis of an expanding corpora in scope, the author chooses "thirty kinds of Zaju of the Yuan Dynasty", "the ancient and modern Zaju in Maiwangguanchaojiao version" and "the selected dramas of the Yuan Dynasty"—three representative anthologies of Zaju of the Yuan Dynasty as the source of research, and conducts an overall analysis of the modal particles in them. Based on the predecessors' research, the paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of the modal particles in Zaju, thus outlining the usage features, developing characteristics and later developments of the Chinese modal particles in the Yuan Dynasty.In light of different characteristics of the three anthologies, the authortreats them as a whole system, while deals with each anthology in different ways during the research. All the modal particles are classified according to obvious characteristics of the era. By putting these modal particles against a synchronic background of modern Chinese and into a diachronic context of Chinese modal particles' historical evolution, this paper attaches importance both to comparison and to explanation as well on the basis of description, which embodies a good combination of synchronic and diachronic research. Meanwhile, the author draws a comparison between some modal particles in Zaju and them in other documents of the same times, between the modal particles in Zaju and them in the documents of the Tang, the Song and the Qing Dynasty. The research tends to explore and summarize law of the modal particles in Zaju of the Yuan Dynasty and to justify the author's own opinion.This dissertation is composed of five chapters.The first chapter reviews some influential papers and works in the field of modal particle's research in Zaju. Meanwhile, this chapter makes a brief introduction of the research subject, source of corpus, its characteristics and the research methods.The second chapter mainly concerns some theoretical problems of the modal particles. "Mood" is an inseparable concept from "modal particle", which is a form of mood. What "mood" is and what the means of expression of "mood" is becomes a topic of heated discussion which stillcouldn't reach agreement by scholars, and the concept of "general mood" is employed in this study. In addition, this chapter also touches upon problems like name, nature, characteristic and meaning of the modal particle. The author proposes a tentative definition of "modal particle".The third chapter reaches a climax of this dissertation with categorizing more than thirty modal particles in Zaju into three types in accordance with characteristic of times, making a thorough probe into these words' usage, meanings and later developments, and summarizing their using characteristics. There are many modal particles in Zaju which emerge in modern Chinese with distinctive style of the times. These modal particles are no longer used in Mandarin of modern Chinese, but some are well preserved in certain dialects and others are used to meet the needs of singing.Originating from oral Chinese in the Five Dynasties, new modal particles had made rapid progress in the Song and the Yuan Dynasties. Major modal particles in modern Chinese appeared in an embryonic form in Zaju with some being identical in forms, and others differing slightly. Although the major modal particles show a succession of characteristics, they also bring out discrepancy in phonetic and usage division because of the diachronic development of language. The author makes an analysis of their differences, explores their later developments and discusses some relevant questions, and therefore putting forward her own opinions.The use frequency of classical modal particles is comparatively low, and there is no variation in usage, which follows the traditional usage.In the final part of this chapter, some commonly seen consecutive forms of the modal particles in Zaju are discussed and their use characteristics are summarized.In chapter four, the author explains her position in writing symbols' forming age of "li (哩)" and "ya (呀)" . It is argued that "li (哩)" comes into being after the modal particle " li (裏) " , and " ya (呀) " is a phonetic word which results from a phonetic change of the modal particle "ye (也)" .Through the investigation of "li (哩)" and "ya (呀)" in literature of the Song, Yuan and the Ming Dynasty, the author points out that"li (哩) "and"ya (呀) "are writing symbols that appeared in the Ming Dynasty.Chapter five is made up of two parts, and in the first part, in order to give readers a quantifiable and systematic impression on the modal particles in Zaju of the Yuan Dynasty, all the modal particles emerging from Zaju of the Yuan Dynasty are counted and presented by statistical tables. In the second part, the writer of this article summarizes characteristics of the modal particles in Zaju of the Yuan Dynasty and goes step further to propose some personal understanding.