A Syntactic Study On The Bronze Inscriptions In The Spring-Autumn Period And Warring States Period

Aiming at filling a gap in Chinese syntax study, the dissertation makes a specific study on the syntax of bronze inscriptions in Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period. It falls into 5 Chapters:Chapter 1:Introduction. It introduces the past syntactic researches on the bronze inscriptions in recent 30 years and the significance and method of this dissertation. Besides, it gives an account of the selection and process of the bronze inscriptions.Chapter 2:Syntactic Study on Nouns.1) There is no negative judgment sentence in the inscriptions of Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period. "S + Nominal Predicate" and "S+隹+Nominal Predicate", are the two main structures of the affirmative judgment sentences. There exist two new structures, "S+殹(繄)+Nominal Predicate" and "S + Nominal Predicate+也",and also judgment sentences with clause, which are not seen in Western Zhou period inscriptions.2) To be used as predicate is the most important usage of Numeral-Measure compound. The Numeral-measure compound predicates explain things, not people, and most of them are metric measurements.3) There exist a large number of nominal sentences without predicate. It's related to the phenomenon that the bronze vessel makers inscribe their names on them.Chapter 3:Syntactic Study on Adjectives. 1)Adjective predicate is the most important sentence structure of adjectives in the inscriptions of Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period. Because of the praising purpose of inscription, adjective predicate is usually a description of the qualities and characters of people's attitude,, ability, deportment, virtue, merit and appearance. The sentence structure may be simple or complex.2) The flexible use of adjectives in the inscriptions of Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period include the followings:adjective as general verbs, adjective being used as active verbs, conative adjectives. The type of adjectives that can be used flexibly is comparatively simple, and the meaning of the adjectives all have commendatory connotation.3) there are 13 adjectives being used as adverbs in the inscription of Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period, which include adjectives of property and adjectives of status, in which the adjective of status"敬"appeared most often.Chapter 4:Syntactic Study on Verbs. This chapter has five sections:1) There is a large number of ditransitive verbal constructions in the bronze inscriptions in the Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period, which include the types of awarding, appellation, obtaining, disposing, and doing for others. The types of awarding and doing for others are the two most important types. The ditransitive verbs in this period are still mainly monosyllabic, and the indirect objects are still mainly put before the direct objects. A new phenomenon is that pronouns being used as indirect object become popular. The appearance of the structure "for (pronoun)+O1+述动"promotes the gradually disappearance of the type of为动类double-object structure.2) The number of the structures with the preposition of objects is not large, which include some regular ones and some irregular ones. New changes appear in the affirmative sentences, including the appearance of sentences with resumptive pronouns such as "shi" and "zhi". However, there are some objects that should be put in the preposition but are not. This also indicates in some degree that the object of that period is gradually going to postposition from the preposition.3)Although there is only three types of兼语句in the Bronze Inscriptions in the Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period such as使令类,助引类,册立封免类,their grammar structure is almost mature.4) The interior structure of multi-verbal forms is rich and complex, including 17 different grammar structures. A new change is that the semantic relation of the verbs in the multi-verbal forms has one new type, i.e., "V1 for reason, V2 for result". The multi-verbal forms with conjunctions not only have the conjunction "yi", but also the new conjunction "er".5) The passive sentences in the Bronze Inscriptions in the Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period are usually shown by the meaning rather than by linguistic patterns. The passive sentences with obvious linguistic patterns and marks only consist of two types, i.e. the "yu" type and the "wei" type. The passive pattern is comparatively simple and rude. Passive sentences are in the transition period of passing from the idea-passive structure to the pattern passive structure.Chapter 5:Study on Elliptical Sentence. The types of elliptical sentences in the Bronze Inscriptions in the Spring-Autumn Period and Warring States Period are rich and complex. The ellipsis of different components, the frequency of appearance and the ways of ellipsis is different in degrees. The most outstanding characteristic is that the ellipsis often occurs in coherent compound sentences.