A Study Of Comparative Contructions In Yuankan Zaju Sanshizhong

The paper, based on Yuankan Zaju Sanshizhong, makes thoroughinvestigation and overall description to the comparative sentencesappearing in the book. We divided the comparative sentences into equalcomparative sentences and comparative sentences, and combined thedescription with explanation, mainly analyses deeply each sentenceform’s structural features and semantic function, and through thediachronic comparison to further reveal the characteristic of comparativesentence in Zaju, so that announcing its historical development of thecomparative sentence in modern Chinese.The equal comparative sentences in Zaju are in great quantity andcomplicated. According to the number of marks,it can divide into singlemarker ahead, single marker behind and double marker.From thecomparative marker, it mainly includes “ru”,“si”.“ruo”,“ban” and “yang” etc. There are a lot abundant composite forms in “ru” and “si”sentences. From the sentence forms,there are many new sentence in theequal comparative sentences such as “X Y ban W”,“X Y si/ye si W” and soon. From the frequency of occurrences,“ruo” sentence had died out dueto its dense classical colour, and the number of “si” sentence steeprise,which makes its status intensified. From the syntactic function, flatstructure was mainly used as predicate, adverbial and complement in theTang and Song dynasties, but it starts to used as attribute in Zaju. Itsfunction makes more complicated and appears that a variety of usageoverlies. Moreover, we also focus on source problem of “X bi Y”,“lai”sentence.The comparative sentences in Zaju have rich types. According tosemantics, it can divide into “sheng guo” sentence,“bu ji”sentence, and“yi bi”sentence. From the comparative marker, it mainly includes “ru”,“si”.“guo”,“bi” and “bu ji” etc. There are many rich expression forms,not only include affirmative and negative forms, but also include crossexamination and query forms. From the sentence forms, it basicallyfollows old sentence forms,but it also emerges many new sentenceforms such as “X W guo Y”,“X bi Y nan tong” and so on. From thefrequency of occurrences,“yu” sentence was current in comparativehistory which had died out,and “bu ji” sentence was oriented.From thecomparative results, W not only emerge after Y, it also appear between X and Y, it can arise among combined type markers besides. Moreover, wealso focus on the problem whether or not “bi” in comparative sentencescompletely transform into prepositions, and how to discriminate that “XW ru/si Y” forms express equal comparative sentences or comparativesentences.