"Book Of Holes Biography" Function Word

Shangshu is China’s oldest collection of political and historical documents. Since Han dynasty, many scholars through the ages have been engaging themselves in the sorting out and textual researches of this Book. And Kongzhuang (or Kong Anguo’s Commentary), one of the earliest and most noted commentaries on Shangshu, has always been the hot point of the study of Confucian classics. There still remains a controversy over the problems as to when the text of Kongzhuan came into being and who authored it. Therefore, new theory and new methodology are required for an improved textual discrimination. Linguistic approach is, no doubt, a good choice in this regard. This is because language is both time-specific and space-specific, with striking differences between its surface structure and deep structure. In addition, language is social-related. The language in any literature has its epochal linguistic rules and expressive habits. Written at a time when the Chinese language was developing from remote and middle ancient Chinese to modern Chinese, Kongzhuan carries with it epochal, successive and transitional linguistic features. Based on an exhaustive investigation and a systematic study, utilizing the metrological method, the present dissertation gives an overall and objective description of the situation of the functional words in Shangshu, revealing the law and characteristics of the development of Chinese function words. The whole dissertation is composed of two parts and seven chapters. Part One focuses on the study of the adverbs of Kongzhuan, while Part Two on the pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, modal particles, and auxiliary words.Chapter One is "Adverbs in Kongzhuan:classification and characteristics". All the adverbs are classified into10categories in terms of their grammatical meanings, namely, adverbs of judgment, of time, of degree, of state, of question, of relation, of range, of advice/command, of negation, and of inference/conjecture. Every category is analyzed in detail to reveal both its static semantic meaning and its distribution, and its dynamic meanings as reflected in its combination with other words.Chapter Two is "Adverbs in Kongzhuan:frequency analysis and their comparison with those in Ancient Texts of Shangshu and in Qinghua Bamboo Slips. Section One is concerned with the statistical analysis of the adverbial word-frequency, with the aim to explore the number, category and word-frequency of each adverb and reveal its intrinsic rules and characteristics. Section Two deals with the comparison between adverbs in Kongzhuan and those in Ancient Text of Shangshu, focusing on disclosing their differences in number, frequency, phonetic form, and semantic features. Section Three is the similar adverbial comparison, but between Kongzhuan and Qinghua Bamboo Slips, mainly focusing on the number and frequency of the adverbs so that the relation and differences between the two will be revealed.Chapter Three is "Pronouns in Kongzhuan:functions and characteristics." Section One is concerned with the usages and features of the personal pronouns; Section Two, the usages and features of the demonstrative pronouns; and Section Three, the usages and features of the interrogative pronouns. With a combinational use of quantitative and qualitative analytic approaches, the previous three sections explore in each pronoun its characteristics, explaining and analyzing its meaning and function in its actual context. Section Four is the statistical analysis of all the pronouns in Kongzhuan summarized in a table. A comparison is made both among different categories and within the same category of the pronouns under question to reveal such rules and characteristics as the obvious pronoun occurrence-frequency differences and centralization of grammatical functions.Chapter Four is "Conjunctions in Kongzhuan:types, usage, and characteristics". Sections One to Eight classifies all the conjunctions in Kongzhuan, based on their grammatical functions, into eight categories:continuative conjunction, assumptive conjunction, progressive conjunction, coordinative conjunction, selective conjunction, concessive conjunction, causal conjunction, and adversative conjunction. With a combinational use of quantitative and qualitative analytic approaches, each conjunction is induced, explained and analyzed. Section Nine shows a table in which all the conjunctions in Kongzhuan are presented in classification. The statistical analysis explains the frequency and distribution of each category of the conjunctions in Kongzhuan and reveals such rules and characteristics as the frequency disequilibrium in the conjunction use, dominant position of monosyllabic conjunctions, quite complete grammatical functions and divisions.Chapter Five is "Prepositions in Kong Zhuan:grammatical function". Sections One to Five under this chapter classifies the prepositions, according to their syntactic functions, into five categories, which are all action-related:a) prepositions of tool, of condition, of method, and of basis; b) prepositions of object; c) prepositions of cause or purpose; d) prepositions of time; and f) prepositions of location or of range. Each category is described, interpreted, and analyzed in detail. Section Six is mainly concerned with the statistical analysis of the usage and frequency. Section Seven focuses on the developmental and changing features of the two particular prepositions于and於, with their occurrence and employment characteristics summarized from diachronic perspective.Chapter Six is "Pragmatic features of the modal particles in Kongzhuan". Sections One to Three classifies the prepositions, according to their grammatical meanings, into three categories:declarative modal particles, interrogative modal particles, and exclamatory modal particles. Section Four is the statistical analysis of the word-frequency of the modal particles, with the purpose of revealing the differences of their inner occurrence frequency, form, and cross-category nature.Chapter Seven is "Auxiliary words in Kongzhuan:types and pragmatic features" Sections One to Three classifies all the auxiliary words in Kongzhuan into three categories according to their grammatical functions:structural auxiliary words, modal auxiliary words, and affix auxiliary words. With a combinational use of quantitative and qualitative analytic approaches, the dissertation describes, interprets, and analyzes each of the modal auxiliary in detail. Section Four is concerned with the statistical analysis of the auxiliary word-frequency, with focus on "之"(zhi) and "是"(shi), revealing the diachronic variability of the two.It is shown that the function words in Kongzhuan have distinctive grammatical and pragmatic characteristics, which are of significant reference value to the study of the history of the Chinese language. Relevant facts about some of the function words can provide new proof for the determination of the book’s genuineness or falsity and of its composing time. The present study itself though, of course, can provide methodological reference for the study of the Chinese bibliography.