Shen Gather Lexical Thematic Studies

Shen Yue is a litterateur and historian in Qi and Liang of Southern Dynasties. According to Liangshu (literature of Liang's history), he left literature and historian works with a wide variety of contents and forms, covering many aspects of social life. It is, therefore, important corpus which reflects the linguistic traits in Southern and Northern Dynasties especially Southern Dynasties. Its language plays a role as a connecting link between that in Western and Southern Han Dynasties, Wei and Jin Dynasties in preceding and Tang and Song Dynasties in following, and reflects the characteristics of Chinese language in mediaeval times. Case study on the present Works of Shen Yue, compiled by later generations, will draw many important conclusions benefiting the study on Chinese language history. This thesis is an initial case study on the Works of Shen Yue.This thesis has four chapters: introduction, study on literary quotations in Works of Shen Yue, some of the new words of Shen Yue, and difficult words in Works of Shen Yue. It focuseson the concrete discussion of two subjects-literary quoted words and new words. The thesis isof significance as a preliminary study because of the lack of existed findings.Study on lexicalization of literary quotations is the most highlighted focus of the thesis. It identifies 202 literary quotations in Shen Yue's work, in which 34 was lexicalized. Many of them are still used now, and some we are quite familiar with, and keep the same lexical forms. On the problem of motives of the lexicalization of literary quotations, it makes new investigations and tries to amend some of the antecedent viewpoints. The thesis also sorts the new words in the Works of Shen Yue, makes a preliminary probe into the emergence, development and extinction of some of the new words, and tries to explain the phenomena with the development law of Chinese language history and lexicology history.On the basis of the above study, it draws five conclusions on literary quotation words :(1) A literary quotation word contains at least a morpheme representing the core implication of the original quotation.(2) Verse plays an important role in the lexicalization of literary quotations.(3) The development law of lexical structures of Chinese language is an internal motive of the lexicalization of literary quotations.(4) Quotations of historical events and literature differ to a certain extent in the manner oflexicalization.(5) Three reasons why the words cannot last long is the obscurity of meanings, the rarity ofmorpheme forming a word, and the impropriate simplification of words.