The word class of “在” inWestern Zhou Chinese

HEWEI; JANG TAE WON

doi:10.15792/clsyn..72.201608.89

The change of sentence patterns in ‘于’ sentence only occurred in the ‘V+于+∼’･‘V+O+于+∼’ and ‘于+∼V+O’. The object after ‘于’ changed in the process of ‘Location → Object of Sacrifice(Abstract Location / Abstract Person) → Person / Thing’. As a result, the whole structure of the sentence did not change. This explains that the usage of ‘于’ was fixed before Western Zhou dynasty. As the object changes, ‘于’ had changed from verb to preposition. However, from Shang dynasty to Western Zhou dynasty, the object after ‘在’ had not changed in ‘V+在+∼’ and ‘V+O+在+∼’ sentence patterns, but there existed only one type of object: location object. This shows that ‘在’ did not change grammatically. In addition, since ‘在+Location)/Non-Location)/Time’ structure was separable from verb, the structure was regarded as independent structure in Shang Shu and Bronze Inscriptions. ‘在+∼+V+O’ structure had not appeared in Western Zhou dynasty. ‘在+∼+V+O’ in the future generation was originated from ‘在+處所，V+O’ structure in Western Zhou dynasty. In this structure, ‘在’ had the feature of verb. This shows that ‘在’ was accepted as verb rather than preposition by Western Zhou dynasty.

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