Corpus-based "a Dream Of Red Mansions" Is "inquiry

"Jiushi(就是)",meaning "it is",is a very active term in contemporary Chinese language and as a functional word,it is even more flexible and complex.In order to better grasp its usage in contemporary Chinese language and investigate its using situation in modern Chinese language,explaining the causes of the term's situation is undoubtedly of great significance.A Dream of Red Mansions is the peak of classical Chinese vernacular novels and its language basically reflects the language appearance in the transition time from modern Chinese language to contemporary Chinese language.Thus,the language in A Dream of Red Mansions is worth studying.Therefore,probing into the term "jiushi" in A Dream of Red Mansions has a positive significance both for better understanding of "jiushi" and for making research on the language of A Dream of Red Mansions.According to the achievements for the grammar study of "jiushi" in academic circle and the explanations of "jiushi" in current dictionaries,the term "jiushi" presenting in A Dream of Red Mansions could be classified into several parts of speech,such as predicate phrase,adverb, conjunction and modal particle.As a predicate phrase,"jiushi" is a compound word,the combination of "jiu(就)" and "shi(是)",in which "jiu" is a modal adverb and "shi" is a determinate verb and the term is just a syntactic combination initially instead of fusing into one word because "jiu" and "shi" still retained their own meanings;"jiushi" as an adverb is the "mark of predicate element",resulting from the continuous subjectivity of semantic meaning of "jiushi" as a predicate phrase,its weakening grammar function and from the gradual change of its syntactic place,and the adverb "jiushi" emphasizes affirmative or restrictive tone;as a conjunction,"jiushi" is of high grammar degree,only indicating the relations between structural elements or between sentences,and when it is used by itself or used with other associated words, it could express nine semantic relations in different levels and different contexts,namely, concessive,assumption,progressive,condition,selectional,turning,consequence,explanatory and connective relations;as a modal particle,"jiushi" is relatively fixed at the end of the sentence and could express certain grammar meaning or pragmatic meaning.Compared with the usage of "jiushi" in A Dream of Red Mansions,the usage of "jiushi" in contemporary Chinese language not only embodies its consistency,but has new developments in this relative stability.The developments could be displayed in the following aspects.First,the typical usage of predicate phrase "jiushi" has got great development in the term's semantic expressions,transforming from stressing causes or time of the incident to stressing the incident itself;the non-typical usage of predicate phrase "jiushi" has developed greatly in the aspects of usage frequency and scope.Second,the usage of "jiushi" as an adverb,especially as a modal adverb and as a restrictive scope adverb,has got great development in syntactic combining function and semantic expressing function.Seeing from syntactic combining function,"jiushi" as a modal adverb not only inherits its usage in A Dream of Red Mansions that it is mostly used in front of verb phrase and noun phrase with hiding numbers,but could be used by itself or in front of number phrase,verb phrase or in the middle of overlapped verbs and adjectives;"jiushi" as a restrictive scope adverb not only pases over its usage in A Dream of Red Mansions that it is used in front of noun phrase or short sentence,but could be used in front of verb elements.Seeing from semantic expressing function,"jiushi" as a modal adverb could express more tones in contemporary Chinese language;"jiushi" as a restrictive scope adverb inherits the usage in A Dream of Red Mansions,expressing the semantic meaning of "defining and restricting certain scope and excluding others",and based on that usage,develops another semantic meaning of "clearly defining the action and behaviour scope and making exceptions preminent".Third, "jiushi" as a conjunction extends and develops its syntactic combining and semantic features in A Dream of Red Mansions.Fourth,"jiushi" as a modal particle extends and develops the usage in A Dream of Red Mansions that it could be used in narrative sentences.