The Development Of Coordinative Conjunction In Chinese

Coordinative Conjunction is function word which is used to coordinate word phrase and clause .It is an important word-class."及,与,以,且,并,共,和,同,并及,以及,与同,一面……一面……,一边……一边,一来……二者……"and so on. According to the rule of the language development, the coordinative conjunction in modern Chinese develop on the bases of ancient Chinese. We divide the development of coordinative conjunction into four periods:pre-Qin dynasty,Han-Wei Jin-South and North dynasty,Tang-Song-Yuan dynasty,Ming-Qing dynasty. Investigating the appearance of coordinative conjunction from twenty-four historical materials, describing and analyzing the usage of coordinative conjunction in each period. We have the following conclusion:1 The way of origination :Most of the function words in Chinese come from content word. Coordinative conjunction as function word also comes from content word. Some learners think that the way of grammarization of coordinative conjunction is content word---adverb preposition---conjunction (Wang Li 1980 1989,Xiang Xi 1993). But we think that the way of grammarization of coordinative conjunction is not like this. E.g."和"directly grammarize from content word to coordinative conjunction.2 Character of developmentThrough the four periods development, the coordinate conjunction have the structure form and grammar function of modern Chinese. The development of conjunction makes its function tend to the delicacy and makes the usages of conjunction tend to complex to meet the needs of social development and language communication.3 The elimination of some coordinative conjunctionWe can find, in a language system, we can choose two or more function word to express a grammatical meaning. For example, either "和"or "并" can be used to coordinate two nouns. This is a redundant phenomenon, which should be eliminated.4 Specificity ---the tendency of the function word"及"was used as preposition and conjunction in ancient Chinese. We can use it as a preposition to express different meaning. For example, it is used to express special time which is equal to "by the time", to express before some time which is equal to "while", to express direction which is equal to "up until", to introduce target which is equal to "with", to express emphasis which is equal to "even". In modern Chinese, the usage of preposition of "及" has already disappeared ."及"is specially used as a conjunction.