"zuo Zhuan" Odd And Even Syllables Synonymous Choice Of Verbs And The Reasons For Visits

The study of verbal synonyms in ancient Chinese works has become a hot issue in the recent research area of ancient Chinese synonyms. Researchers have dealt with this topic from different perspectives but fewer have touched the monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms. This paper is meant to discuss the factors that may constrain the selection between verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms in the Qin dynasty and the author hopes to shed some light on the understanding of different choices the ancient Chinese may have made in the selection between verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms and to some extent to facilitate the research on the reasons that cause the process of transition of Chinese words from monosyllabic to disyllabic, and meanwhile to provide a tentative angel to the study of verbal synonyms in ancient Chinese works.This paper employs static descriptions and dynamic analyses to research on 32 groups of verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms in Zuo Zhuan so as to find out the possible factors that may determine the selection between verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms while referring other canonical ancient Chinese works such as The Book of Mencious, Guoyu, The Book of Xunzi and etc.. An overall description of the mechanism that may constrain the selection of verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms is presented in view of prosodic, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic considerations.Through the analysis of 1500 examples of 32 groups of verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms in Zuo Zhuan, we have reached such a conclusion: there are four factors that may constrain the selection of verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms, namely, prosodic constraint, semantic difference, syntactic function and style consideration. First, the selection of between verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms may come out of the consideration of symmetric rhythmic harmony which requires monosyllabic verbs go together with monosyllabic ones and disyllabic verbs to go together with disyllabic ones. Second, generally monosyllabic verbal synonyms express concrete notions and their disyllabic counterparts tend to express abstract meanings. Third, complicated objects may require the appearance of monosyllabic verbal synonyms syntactically. Fourth, disyllabic verbal synonyms often appear in spoken Chinese and are re rarely used in written Chinese at that time. Among all of the factors mentioned above, the semantic difference is the main factor that constrains the selection between verbal monosyllabic and disyllabic synonyms.