The Language of the Book of Songs

Description

From the introduction: The present work is a study of the grammar of the language of the Book of Songs. The Book of Songs ( 詩經 ) is a key document in the study of Archaic Chinese. It has a greater variety of grammatical auxiliaries than any other text in Archaic Chinese; some of these are peculiar to the Book of Songs. The Book of Songs too, because it spans the period from the 11th century to the 7th century B.C., afford almost the only material which attests the changes that occur in the language between the reasonably well documented Early Archaic period (11th and 10th centuries B.C.) and the Middle and Late Archaic periods which succeed them. The present study therefore aims to fill an important gap in our knowledge of the Archaic Chinese grammatical auxiliaries; it also seeks to provide certain missing links in our understanding of the evolutionary processes by which Archaic Chinese develops from Oracular and Early Archaic Chinese to Middle and Late Archaic Chinese. Title Acknowledgements Contents Introduction Word Parataxis Hypotaxis Compound Words and Versification Syntagma Verbal Sentence Aspect in Verbal Syntagma Post-verbal Elements Agent Instrument Subordinate Clause Anaphora in Verbal Sentence Sentential Mood Time and Place Emphatic Exposure Accentuation Determinative Sentence Wei and Feei as Determined Terms - Truth and Falsity Grammaticized Words in Determinative Sentence Cause and Consequence Vocative Form Sentences in Distribution Substitution, Pronouns Status Pronouns Demonstratives Interrogative Substitutes Indefinite Substitute Degrees of Comparison Linguistic Strata in Book of Songs The word YUN Homogeneity of poetic tradition in the Book of songs Poetic licence List of works mentioned Lexicon and index of words