Research Of The Modal Particles In "Journey To The West"

"Journey to the West" is a Chinese Zhanghui novel written in the middle Period of Ming Dynasty.The modal particles in the novel are abundant,but they have never studied systematically according to the available research materials.Hence,it is a significant work to study them.The purpose to study the system of modal particles represented in " Journey to the West" is to display the General use of the modal particles in the middle Period of Ming Dynasty and to clarify the development and formation of the modal particle system in Ming and Qing Dynasty.At the same time,the research work can provide certain data for the study of Chinese history and the further study of this novel.This thesis classifies these modal particles into different groups according to their frequency of use and their historical development tendency after having counted the main modal particles in "Journey to the West" . In order to reflect the features of the system of modal particles and their evolution of semantic variation more accurate,we explain not only the correlation mood elements such as mood adverbs and interjections, but also the correlation notional words such as verbs with same morphology.In the same time,means such as comparison or statistics is employed so that the investigative subject can be examined from both diachronic and synchronic angles.It has been found in the research that the system of modal particles represented in "Journey to the West" is in a transitional state.Several main modal particles in modern Chinese had had their original forms,which played a main role in the use of all the modal particles in the period when the novel was written,but these original forms were not definitely the final ones. The mumerous and complicated status of use of modal particles in Song and Yuan Dynasty generally came to an end in this period and the modal particle system gradually became simplified.Some archaized auxiliaries of tone in the Novel have atrophied in application,which are ye,yi,er,ect.The dialeetical feature of "Journey to the West" had been in herited and developed the auxiliary of tone,such as shi,ect.