Middle Chinese Tone Word Thematic Studies

Modal words is one of the prominent characters of both ancient and modern Chinese. Due to its own character and flexible ways of usage, Modal tends to cause a dim impression of the phraseological fuction. And there are still many questions remained to be resolved, for the Modal words of mediaeval Chinese are quite complicated and the previous research on them has been insufficient. Thus, this paper tried to do some progressive research on the Modal words of mediaeval Chinese.This paper talked about the following 4 segments:In Chapter 1, we talked about relevant issues of Modal words, including Modal system, Instruments of Chinese Modal expression, Definition and Classification of Modal words, the Present status and Prospects of the Modal usage research of mediaeval Chinese.In Chapter 2, through complete excavation and research of the selective 6academic works, we have selected the 12 main Modal words: Ye (也), Yi (矣) ,Er(耳),Yan(焉),Hu(乎),Ye(邪),Zai(哉),Er(尔),ErYi(而已),Yi(已),Zhe(者),Na(那).Later, we also gave a detailed depiction of the words, together with suitableanalysis of each word respectively.In Chapter 3, we first talked about the characters of primitive and mediaeval Chinese Modal words, then we did a survey of the development and progress of various kinds of Modal words from primitive to mediaeval times, namely declarative modals, question modals, imperative modals, exclamation modals. At last, we conducted pilot study of the causes of mediaeval Chinese modals development.In chapter 4, we compared the Modal words in 2 books, Shi Shuo Xin Yu and Luo Yang Qie Lan Ji. We mainly made a comparison of the 2 Modal words,"Ye (邪)" and"Ye (也)", and obtained some linguistic difference between north and south.