A Study Of The Polysyllabic Conjunctions In The Chinese-translated Buddhist Of Ancient China Before The Sui Dynasty

The language used in the Chinese-translated Buddhist sutras before the Sui dynasty contains much more oral elements. It is a typical sample of the Chinese oral language in the middle ancient China. In this article, I consulted 941 Chinese-translated Buddhist sutras emerged before the Sui dynasty and took 224 polysyllabic conjunctions that basically reflect the approximate appearance of the Chinese polysyllabic conjunction in the medieval period of China from these books. Among these polysyllabic conjunctions, there are 186 disyllabic and 31 trisyllable and 7 quadrisyllable. About forty percent of the 224 polysyllabic conjunctions have not been included in the Chinese Dictionary (unabridged) by comparison.The 224 polysyllabic conjunctions are mainly classified into coordinators and subordinators according to the current practice and by taking their inherent logic as the standard. Among them, the coordinators could be classified into compound and progressive and alternative and succession, the subordinators could be classified into postulation and the concessionlike and concession and causality and condition and transition. Based on these classifications, the above subgroups are illustrated with examples one by one according to the classification and its order. Much more attention is paid by this article to some conjunctions' formation mechanism and a preliminary research is taken to the rarely met conjunctions in the other classic works in the same period of China. Meanwhile, I have tried my best to make a inductive description and a quantitative analysis to these conjunctions and attached importance to the conjunctions' internal structure analysis as well as the analysis of the conjunctions' universal usage.