The Study Of Chinese Conjunctions In Tang Dynasty And Five Dynasties

Late Tang dynasty and five dynasties is the important period of Chinese development during which vernacular began to appear on the history arena and meet as equals with classical Chinese, dialectal vocabulary started to enter into written words, pronunciation and vocabulary and grammar began to change too . In the meanwhile, conjunctions had great changes: the most conjunctions which began to be used in early Qin dynasty had been applied continually in the late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties; the conjunctions were used widely which began to be used in Han dynasty, Wei dynasty , Jin dynasty and the Southern and Northern dynasty. During this period, there were many new conjunctions, which established the usage structures for the following conjunctions to a certain extent and these conjunctions began to have new features: the application of conjunctions of the same meaning together, the new appearance of many new conjunctions , the intervention of many new dialectal conjunctions and so on. Therefore it is significant and valuable to probe into the conjunctions in late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties.We used the two documents of Dun Huang Religious Narrative Literature(short as Bianwen) and Zu Tang Ji(short as Zu) as the basic data in order to study the conjunctions of late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties, because these two documents, the Bianwen and Zu T, were publicly known to be worth investigating. The language in Bianwen reflected the northern dialect to some extent while the language in Zu reflected the southern dialect, so these two documents were complementary in the space. The languages in Bianwen and Zu were used simultaneously, they were contemporaneous corpus. Based on above, it is helpful to investigate the conjunctions to choose these two documents as the studying corpus.The dissertation can be divided into five chapters:The first chapter is the introduction. In this chapter, the author introduces the value of conjunctions studied in late Tang and Five dynasties and the achievements. Based on the analysis and summary, the author points out the key emphasis in the dissertation. In view of the existing condition of research in Bianwen and Zu, the emphasis is not laid on the careful description of the data—conjunctions. By examining the process of the grammaticalization of the conjunctions and summarizing the causes and features of the grammaticalization and comparing the distribution condition of conjunctions in these two documents, the author tries to explain the reason of such distribution of these conjunctions, which is the key point of this research.The second chapter is the category of the conjunctions. In this chapter, the author mainly summarize the definition of conjunctions , the category and the distinction between conjunction and preposition, and between conjunction and adverbial. Based on the summary, the author puts forward the definition of the conjunction. Conjunction is a form word which plays a connective role in the following structures: words, phrases, sentences and sentence groups and so on and indicates the specific syntactic and logic relation. The author also tells the difference between conjunction and adverbs, conjunction and preposition. The dispute of conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions has been the unsettled question. Different viewpoints which are right in theory are put forward by many scholars, but these points can not be used in practice. The reason is that any criterion in the linguistics only applies to general tendency and the criterion is not absolute standard. When we discuss the usage of conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions, we use the meaning as a standard at the same time consider its form and pay attention to its function in the sentence. According to this criterion, we sort out 206 words.The third and fourth chapters are the main body of this dissertation. In these chapters, according to the tradition viewpoints, we divide the conjunctions into two categories: associative conjunctions and subordinators. Associative conjunctions can be subdivided into four categories: coordinating conjunctions, successive conjunctions, selective conjunctions and progressive conjunctions. Subordinators can be subdivided into seven categories: hypothetical conjunctions, causal conjunctions, concessive conjunctions, relational conjunctions, adversative conjunction and purposive conjunctions. The author describes the conjunctions of these 11 categories and tries to summarize the frequency of every conjunction used in the two documents and word formation and the earliest usage. We also use charts in order to show it clearly. Meanwhile we probe into the grammaticalization process of some conjunctions which are not discussed frequently。When discussing the monophonic conjunctions, we examine their meanings and observe the grammaticalization process of these conjunctions during which we find out when the monophonic conjunctions become functional words in two conditions: When discussing and describing the diplophonic conjunctions, we focus on the word formation and the grammaticalization process of the conjunctions. During the discussion , we combine the theory of grammaticalization with semantics, phonology and cognitive linguistics to explore these conjunctions from these four angles of pronunciation, lexeme, grammar and pragmatics.During the summary of these 11 conjunctions of subcategories, according to the conjunctions distribution in the corpus, word formation and used period in the last section of each category, we use the charts, add an explanatory note to the list of statistics. In order to compare with the subsequent conjunctions of the same category, we cited the results of an investigation in Song dynasty, Yuan and Ming dynasty so that there is a comparison in length direction.The fifth chapter is the conclusion. In this chapter, we mainly investigate four main problems: the characteristics of the conjunctions in late Tang dynasty; the characteristics of the conjunctions grammaticalization in late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties; the origin and word formation of conjunctions, and the characteristics of conjunctive distribution in these two documents along with the reasons.By studying the conjunctions in late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties, we summarize the following features of conjunctions: first, second, many new conjunctions began to appear. Third, diplophonic and monophonic conjunctions were used simultaneously. Fourth, conjunctions were interchangeable widely. Based on the summary, we find out the reasons of these features presented in conjunctions. During late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties, the components of diplophonic conjunctions—the monophonic conjunctions—were enough and the corresponding chances of diplophonic conjunctions with same meaning were more than before. In addition, dialectal vocabularies and the conjunctions of some religion began to enter the written system, which helped the conjunctions with the same meaning join together to a certain extent. The late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties were important periods of Chinese during which great changes had taken place in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. And conjunctions were no exception. Many high-frequency conjunctions in modern Chinese began to appear, such as"he, zhiyao, zhishi, budan and buguan". The succession of conjunctions made diplophonic and monophonic conjunctions used simultaneously because the most conjunctions appeared in early Qin dynasty were monophonic and the following conjunctions were diplophonic. Because the data of research were early copy of spoken and sung literature, diplophonic and monophonic conjunctions used crossly in order to rhyme and performance. Moreover, for the sake of the syllables, modal particles were used. Slowly some diplophonic conjunctions formed. The interchangeable application of conjunctions was a typical feature in the late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties.We summarize that the grammaticalization of conjunctions in the late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties has the following characteristics:Monophonic conjunctions in late Tang and five dynasties derived from two conditions: the first condition was that other kind of words became conjunctions directly and the second was the words in other category were borrowed to become conjunctions. Diplophonic conjunctions derived from eight conditions: the conjunctions with the same meaning were used together to form a conjunction; the conjunctions with the same meaning were used crossly to form a conjunction; the other kind of words became a new conjunction by grammaticalization; the interior of a conjunction changed to form a new conjunction; the conjunction of re-analysis formed a new conjunction; the conjunction added suffix to form a new one; the phrases were used together to form a new one; the conjunction was affected by the context of it to form a new conjunction.The distribution characteristics of the conjunctions and the causes in these two documents are the most important points that we are going to discuss. By charts, we find out that the distribution of conjunctions in these two documents was unbalanced and different. We also try explaining this phenomenon in the respects of the linguistic characteristics of Buddhism, the characteristics of style and the logic. Because of the pressing time and the limited knowledge, we don't come up the expectations.In brief, the research of the conjunctions in late Tang dynasty and Five dynasties is a component of the research of Chinese conjunctions. The system of conjunctions is a dynamic and developing system and in different periods the conjunction will present different features. I hope that I may summarize my study and make my pygmy effort to investigate the conjunctions by describing the conjunctions and exploring the grammaticalization and the related problems.