Abstract:
This dissertation focuses on the adverbs appeared in excavated bamboo and silk manuscripts of the Warring States period (450-221 BCE). Based on their semantic and grammatical functions, I classify the adverbs into nine categories: adverbs of range, degree, time, frequency, negation, manner, and interrogative adverbs, honorary adverbs, and relative adverbs. This study includes 117 adverbs appeared in 4397 instances in Warring States bamboo and silk manuscripts. Using the descriptive grammar and structural analysis, I analyze each adverb’s syntactic structure and describe its grammatical phenomenon and characteristics, and investigate the process of grammaticalization of several adverbs. The results indicate that in terms of syntactic structure and grammatical function, the adverbs in bamboo and silk manuscripts are not different from those in transmitted texts of the Warring States and Qin (221-206 BCE) and Han (202 BCE-220 CE), such as Zuozhuan, Guoyu, Lunyu, Mengzi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Zhanguo ce, Han feizi, Lüshi chunqiu, and Shiji. The only difference is the graphic conventions. In excavated manuscripts, there are more borrowed graphs and graphs of different structure, reflecting the linguistic diversity of the period and preserved many more authentic linguistic features.