The main object of this dissertation is the "mood words" in Wang yin-zhi's An Exposition of the Functional Words in the Confucian Classics (Texts and Commentaries). Although this work is edited in the form of a dictionary, we find that there is some implicated grammatical significance in it. We shall endeavor to explicate this significance, by means of "linkage" and "grouping", in order to construct the system of mood words therein.
In the introduction, I.e. Chapter 1, we shall firstly sketch the achievement of study of the "function words" of this work. On this ground, we shall proceed to a general study of the author,arrangement and methodology of this work. The distinctions and relations of the nominal meaning between "function words", "auxiliary words" and "mood words" will be initially clarified.
In chapter 2, we shall proceed to a further specification and elaboration of such distinctions and relations. As a result, the foundation of a theory of "mood words" will be laid in chapter 3.
In chapter 4, 5 and 6 some methodological considerations of "linkage" and "grouping", including the procedural and appraisal aspects will be raised and clarified through the description and explanation of the "sentential mood words" as the data supplied by Wang's work.
In chapter 7, the synthesis of the last three chapters will be extended to two problems concerning "sentential mood words", namely, the so-called "rhetoric questions" and "the combinative use of sentential mood words".
The last section of this chapter is the conclusion of the whole dissertation.