Study Of Reduplicated Words In Sixty Melodies

Sixty Melodies,compiled by Mao Jin in the Ming dynasty,is a collection of traditional Chinese dramas in the Yuan dynasty and Ming dynasty.The dramas included in Sixty Melodies are everlasting and enduring works,and they are important literatures for the language study in the Yuan and Ming periods.These works reflect the actual situation of the language in that period because they keep the language elements and present the language features in the two dynasties.This study collects all reduplicated words in Sixty Melodies as the object and with the combination of dictionaries,it analyzes the meaning and usage of reduplicated words when they appear as adjectives,nouns,adverbs,and onomatopoeias.Meanwhile,the study makes a diachronic comparison between the reduplicated words in Sixty Melodies and some works in other periods,such as Erya,Guangya,Dieya and Modern Chinese Dictionary.The purpose of the comparison is to summarize the value of Chinese vocabulary study,especially in the rule of development of reduplicated words and the succession of reduplicated words in modern Chinese.This study is divided into five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction,which states the topic-selecting motivation,literature review,and the significance,method,and object of the study.Chapter Two investigates the semantic meaning of the reduplicated words in Sixty Melodies.On one hand,this chapter has a classified discussion on the meaning and features of the reduplicated words according to their word classes and the collection situation in Modern Chinese Dictionary.The author supplements some meanings that are not collected in dictionaries with the help of examples from other literature.On the other hand,it makes a diachronic comparison with Erya,Guangya,Dieya and Modern Chinese Dictionary to show the development of reduplicated words.Chapter Three mainly discusses the syntactic functions of reduplicated words.Combined with the word meaning,word class,word position in sentence,and the context,this chapter analyzes the syntactic functions of reduplicated words and counts their frequency and proportion according to different syntactic functions.Chapter Four discusses the rhetorical functions from perspectives of onomatopoeia,character description,scenery description,and degree adjustment.The frequency of each rhetorical function is counted as well.Chapter Five is the conclusion.This chapter summarizes the features of the reduplicated words in Sixty Melodies.Then,the study describes the diachronic development of reduplicated words and points out the succession of reduplicated words in modern Chinese.At last,it emphasizes the important position of the reduplicated words in SixtyMelodies in Chinese vocabulary study.