Research On The Existential Sentence In Er Pai

The two books,Amazing Tales-First Series and Second-Series,written by Ling Mengchu are chronically called Er Pai by People.There are about 800,000 characters in the two books which finely describe the social life of that time and record the language and dialogues,actions and activities,psychology of the civilian class including citizens,businessmen,handicraftsmen,petty officials,as well as monks,nuns,prostitutes of Ming Dynasty.And the two books provide us with abundant and three-dimensional language material to study the language,vocabulary,syntactical structure of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.This article guided with the Chinese syntax theory of "Three planes",attempts to investigate the syntax,semantics,and pragmatics of the existential sentences in Er Pai.we will strive to explore the syntactic structure,semantic types,pragmatic types of the existential sentences in Er Pai deep and thoroughly.There are totally five parts in this paper:The first chapter is introduction,which mainly elaborates the general situation of Er Pai and illustrate the research objective as well as research meaning of this article.Besides,there are also a research status introduction of the existential sentence system and Er Pai,and a question about the definition of existential sentences.According to the theory of "Three planes",first of all,the Chapter two make a syntactic analysis of the existential sentences in Er Pai.We ascertain the classified criterion before we divide the existential sentences in Er Pai into existential sentences which use verbs as predicates and don't use on the basis of if there is a segment B and the nature of predicates of the segment B.Then we go on analyzing and explaining every category of existential sentences.The Chapter three analyzes semantic types of the segment A and semantic grids of the segment C of the existential sentences in Er Pai from the angle of semantics.The semantic types of the segment A contain three kinds,including the pure time-based,the pure space-based and the time and space hybrid;while the semantic grids of the segment C contain five kinds,including agentive grid,patient grid,parties grid,ended things grid and agent grid.The Chapter four discusses the existential sentences in Er Pai from the angle of pragmatics which mainly contains three kinds,including the type of narration,depiction and judgement.Finally,in the epilogue part,we make a brief summary of this paper,and compare the existential sentence system in Er Pai with it of the contemporary Chinese succinctly,then reaching a corresponding conclusion: the types of existential sentence in Er Pai are roughly the same with it of contemporary Chinese.Many kinds of types of existential sentence have formed in Ming Dynasty and have appeared in Er Pai.They gradually develop and perfect as well.