THE SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AND IN IN WARRING STATES PERIOD TEXTS

Abstract

This paper supports and extends the results of previous studies, such as Pulleyblank (1986) and Chang (2012), that argue that the choice of or Classical Chinese is not random, but rather is conditioned by the features of the preceding verb. Through a close examination of the co occurrence of and with the high-frequency verb in six Warring States period texts, it is shown that additional semantic and syntactic factors influence the choice between the two. Semantically speaking, while occur followed by a noun indicating a place, a time, or a person all of which can be described as+concrete goals it is that occurs followed by a degree, result, or extent, which can be described as concrete goals. The concrete goals that appear as objects of include a near demonstrative pronoun iFE, a noun (including an abstract noun) or noun phrase, a verb phrase, and even a sentence. Syntactically speaking, only Noun" appears in nominalized contexts in complex syntactic structures, such as before a nominalizer before or after a relativizer and as a head noun after a possessive/attributive marker These findings provide additional support for the claim that-T. and represent distinct lexical items, with distinct semantic feature sets, in Classical Chinese.