On Paradigmatic Relations In Word Groups Of Honour And Disgrace Of Virtue In Xun Zi

The primary principle lying behind the development of monosyllable-oriented tendency towards disyllable-oriented tendency of Chinese lexical items is that the inner components interact with each other, which as a result adds to the singularity, clarity and stableness of the meaning achieved through combination.With Xun Zi as its data basis, this thesis attempts to make a research on the lexical items expressing honour and disgrace of virtue in this book by observing the semantic changes or variations after the entrance of monosyllable word into a synonymous word group. From a micro semantic perspective, the author will first give a description of these word groups. Based on the description together with some analysis, an observation will be made on the interactive relations and the combination rules within these word groups. Thus a more concrete and evidential analysis will be achieved both on the formation and on the inner mechanism of the disyllabic words during the Warring States period.The main body of this thesis can be divided into four parts:A brief introduction to disyllabic words and a brief literature review on the respective researches towards the monograph Xun Zi will be made. Then an explanation will be made on the edition-choosing process and some relative concepts. The second part will give a general description on the monosyllabic words and the disyllabic word groups, aiming to make a limitation to and a classification on the word groups expressing honour and disgrace of virtue. In the subsequent part, the author first makes a selection on the typical paradigmatic word groups and then on the analytical patterns of this research. After making a case study on the word groups of "Gong Jing" and "Jin Shen" by analyzing the systematic distributions of the components before and after their combination, the author continues to apply a similar analyzing approach onto other word groups under discussion.