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A study on the changes in the order of words of the object in the Oracle Inscriptions

  • The Journal of Study on Language and Culture of Korea and China
  • Abbr : JSLCKC
  • 2022, (63), pp.33-68
  • DOI : 10.16874/jslckc.2022..63.002
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Study on Chinese Languge and Culture
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature
  • Received : January 10, 2022
  • Accepted : February 20, 2022
  • Published : February 28, 2022

dong-choon Ryu 1

1서강대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Currently, the basic word order of verbs and objects in Chinese is VO word order, but there seems to be a lot of OV word order in pre-Qin Chinese. There are not many prior studies on the process of synchronic change from OV to VO in Chinese after the pre-Qin period, but there are not many in-depth studies on the pattern of OV or VO in the Oracle Inscriptions. Therefore, this paper examined the order of Chinese verbs and objects in the earliest period for the Oracle Inscriptions by dividing them according to the sentence type and word class. As a result of the review, there are more OV word orders in the Oracle Inscriptions than in the subsequent period, which is consistent with the principle of language change, given the trend of changing the word order of Chinese from OV to VO. In addition, the OV word order evidence of the pronoun object in the positive sentence found in this paper solves why the OV word order, which was not in the Oracle Inscriptions, appears in future generations, which could not be explained according to the previous opinion. In other words, the VO word order and the OV word order, which coexisted in the affirmative text of the Oracle Inscriptions, gradually converged in the latter generation in VO word order, proving that the word order change progressed step by step. The change in noun objects in VO word order earlier than pronoun objects in the Oracle Inscriptions is also consistent with the pan-verbal trend. Finally, if the object is a noun, there are relatively more OV words in the Selection Inscription that focus only on the object than on the Symmetry Inscription that focus on the entire predicate, which shows the relationship between the word order and focus. This aspect shown in the Oracle Inscriptions does not violate the trend of synchronic changes in the Chinese object word order, and is consistent with the universal principles of language.

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