A Study Of Interrogative Sentences In The Guide To Kuan Hua

The Guide to Kuan Hua is an overseas Mandarin textbook published in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican period.The“call and response” is the main format of the textbook.Since interrogative sentences are the main form of "question",the textbook contains a large number of interrogative sentences and a variety of types,with 712 examples.The Guide to Kuan Hua is characterized by the transitional nature of the transformation of modern Chinese to modern Chinese in the use of interrogative sentences.This dissertation focuses on the three plane-grammar theories with syntactics,semantics,and pragmatics,and study from both “syntactic and semantic-structural features” and “pragmatic functions”.This dissertation adopts a research method combining dynamic interpretation and static depiction,qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis,we seek to conduct a comprehensive and in-depth analysis and study of the interrogative sentences of The Guide to Kuan Hua,and to explore the features of the appearance of the interrogative sentences of the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty represented by the interrogative sentences of The Guide to Kuan Hua,and to discover the subtle features presented in the development of modern Chinese interrogative sentences to modern Chinese.The main part includes the following aspects.The first part is an analysis of the “syntactic-semantic” structural features of the interrogative sentences in The Guide to Kuan Hua.The syntactic structure and semantic distribution of the special questions,yes-no questions,and select questions in The Guide to Kuan Hua are analyzed in detail respectively.Specific questions are divided into those marked by interrogative pronouns and unmarked specific questions;yes-no questions are divided into intonational yes-no questions and yes-no questions with intonation;select questions are further divided into columnar select questions and pro and con select questions.The second part is the analysis of the pragmatic function of the interrogative sentences of The Guide to Kuan Hua.In this paper,we divide interrogative sentences in The Guide to Kuan Hua into two categories: genuine interrogative sentences and insincere interrogative sentences.Regarding the genuine interrogative sentences,this paper focuses on its pragmatic features in three aspects:presupposition,focus,and speech acts.In addition,we have explored the main function of authentic question which is the interrogative function,and its internal categories of degree of doubt,such as pure question,speculation,and confirmation.Regarding the Official Language Guide to pseudo-questions,this paper focuses on four types of pseudo-questions: greeting-greeting questions,imperative questions,asking questions,and rhetorical questions,and the pragmatic functions of pseudo-questions,which are declarative function,communicative function,and conversational function,respectively.The third part is a comparison between the interrogative sentences of The Guide to Kuan Hua and those of modern Chinese.The comparison is still started from two aspects: syntactic-semantic structure and pragmatic function.By comparison,we find that in terms of structure,some of the question pronouns,intonation words and related words have been eliminated by modern Chinese,while some still have vitality;in terms of function,the function of the true question remains almost unchanged.The functions of pseudo-questions have been enriched and developed in the modern Chinese.