A Study Of The Imperative Sentences In Yuanquxuan

Based on the"Three-Plane"Grammatical Theory, the exhaustible discussion is made on the imperative sentences used in the spoken parts of the traditional opera, Yuanquxuan, to reveal the syntactical, semantic and pragmatic features and rules of the imperative sentences in this work. This paper is divided into the following seven parts:The first part is about the introduction of the significance, methods and concerned corpus of this study and of the achievements and current situation of the study on the imperative sentences in Chinese language to disclose the orientation of the study in this article.Part two discusses the characteristic-carried words for the imperative sentences used in the spoken parts of Yuanquxuan. The imperative sentence is classified into such two kinds as the imperative sentence with the characteristics-carried words and the one with non-characteristic- carried words. The characteristic-carried words for the imperative sentences are verb, auxiliary verb, adverb, and mood auxiliary. The imperative sentence with the characteristics-carried words can be divided into two types such as the single-existence of the characteristics-carried words and the co-existence of different characteristics-carried words.Part three is concerned with the syntactic study of the imperative sentence mentioned above. Its subject is dominated by the second-person pronoun. The first-person pronoun and other substantive elements can also play a role of subject in the imperative sentence. The predicate can be verbal, adjective and substantive, with the verbs as the superior dominance.Part four focuses on its semantic study. The discussion is made on the semantic attributes and requirements of the verbs in the affirmative and negative imperative sentences. The imperative sentence formed by a single verb can be used to express politeness, cuing, urging, command, and forbidding. The imperative sentence formed by adjective has the same choice of the affective meaning as that formed by verb. The adjective used as predicate is the result of metonymy. Part five is centered on its pragmatic study. The study is made of the contextual features of the imperative sentence and the discussion is also made on its pragmatic functions. There are obvious differences between the imperative sentences with different functions, those with the characteristics-carried words and the one with non-characteristic- carried words, and those with different characteristics-carried words. The appearance or omission of the subject as well as the repetition of the subject has some influence on the locutionary force.In part six, the contrastive study is made between the imperative sentences in Yuanquxuan and those in the literary documents of Yuan Dynasty. The exploration is made of the rise and fall of such negative adverbs as"wu(勿)","mo(莫)","xiu(休)","bie(别)"and the expressions in the concerned literary documents in Yuan Dynasty. The comparison is also made of the imperative sentence pattern introduced by"xiu(休)""ba(罢)"and"bo(波)"in different documents.The last part concerns about the conclusion. It is the generalization of the whole article and the prospect of the further study.