"the Cautionary Tong Said" Question Research

The Ming Dynasty’s Stories to Warn Men is a peak of ancient vernacular shortstories.Compared with early vernacular, its langue, literary style and structure had changed a lot.Because Stories to Warn Men is a part of Feng Menglong’s “San Yan”, so the separate study ofit are few. Most existing works concentrated in literature, only a few are about language.Especially the study of syntactic aspects is more fewer. So this reflects the lack of Stories toWarn Men’s study.We described the interrogative sentences in Stories to Warn Men with the exhaustivelyquantitative and qualitative analysis. And divided the interrogative sentences into specificinterrogations, yes-no interrogations, alternative interrogations, rhetorical interrogations andshewen sentences according to the classified atandard to the Interrogative Sentences of modernChinse. Therefore,the article is divided into five parts. By the study we find that:Specific interrogations which are mostly often seen in the book of Stories to Warn Menmake up almost60.6%of all the interrogative sentences in this book(totally762such cases areinvolved). The structure of specific interrogations which has already had the interrogative formsuch as"….+呢"is similar to the same type in modern chinese.In addition, on the usage ofquestion words, the"何"series, which derived from ancient times is comprehensive in meaningand function, occupies a large scale in Specific interrogations. The "甚" series whichdevelopped well enough in the earlier period of times has possessed the meaning and functionof "什么"which have in modern chinese. Though the "怎" series has the function of asking thereasons and ways, one of its function—asking "怎么样" is also completely replaced by the "he"series, so it still needs to be improved.A total of117cases of yes-no interrogations account for9.3percent of all the interrogativesentences. The main marks are interrogative adverbs, interrogativ mood words and combinationof the two.In which the "么"has an important role.Alternative interrogations in Stories to Warn Men have a relative small quantity(a total of83cases) which account for6.6percent of all the interrogative sentences. It can be divided intopositive and negative selection of interrogations and parallel selection of interrogations. Thepostive and negative selection of interrogative sentences have the two formats of "VPneg" and"VP不VP". There are also two types of paralle selection of interrogations,which are sentenceswith alternative conjunctions and sentences without.Rhetorical sentences in Stories to Warn Men are rich(a total of265cases), which accountfor21.1percent of all the interrogative sentences. They can be divided into interrogativepronouns sentences with148cases, interrogative adverbs sentences with102cases, fixed structure with9cases, yes-no sentences with1case and without marks sentences with5cases.Different interrogative words and have few mood words at the end of sentences are the biggestdifference from morden Chinese.Shewen sentences in Stories to Warn Men are at the least(only30cases), which accountfor2.4percent of all the interrogative sentences. The usage of Shewen sentences is the same tomorden Chinese.In a word, in the period of the neoteric Chinese transition to the modern Chinese, theinterrogative sentences in Stories to Warn Men not only manitested the language inheriting,moreover also quite close to the modern Chinese. The interrogative sentences in Stories toWarn Men has its own integrate systematic and reflected the real language condition at thattime in a certain degree.