Western Zhou Dynasty Verb Study

The Western Zhou Dynasty bronze inscription is one of the earliest systematic written languages of Han nationality and very important to studying the ancient character,vocabulary and grammar since it keeps in the original state and records the true language phenomena at that time.In this dissertation,we choose verbs in bronze inscription of Western Zhou Dynasty as our main research object and the meaning and the grammatical function of those verbs are thoroughly studied.The work is composed of seven chapters.The first chapter outlines the value of bronze inscription,give an account of the history of studying bronze inscription,present the meaning of studying verbs of bronze character and introduce the methods of our research.The second chapter introduces the criterion,quantity and classification of verbs of Western Zhou Dynasty inscription,and 493 monosyllabic verbs and 102 disyllabic verbs are combed out as the research object.According to the grammatical functions, those verbs can be divided into 9 categories.The third chapter explains the meaning of the verbs from many angles,and gives a demonstration in four different ways,from primary signification to extended meaning,synonymy to antonym,mono-meaning to poly-meaning and exaggeration.The fourth chapter dwells on the combination function of the monosyllabic verbs of Western Zhou Dynasty inscription and summarizes them from three respects:the relations between act verbs,displacement verbs,modal verbs,existential verbs,modal verbs and object,relations between predicate verbs and subject,and relations between adverbial modifier and complement.The fifth chapter studies disyllabic verbs of Western Zhou Dynasty inscription from three aspects:the criterion,structure and combination function.The sixth chapter considers the propagation of verbs of Western Zhou Dynasty inscription from three aspects:phonetic loan,extended meaning,and variant form. The final chapter reviews 33 verbs of Western Zhou Dynasty inscription and gives them more synthetic demonstration according to their form,the meaning and the grammatical function.