고대중국어 ‘而’의 다기능성 고찰

Abstract

In ancient Chinese, ‘而’ has generally been classified as a multifunctional conjunction. According to the study of this paper, the multifunctionality of ‘而’ was able to find unity in the frame that the front and back phrases of ‘而’ are the result structure. In the early stage of the appearance of ‘而’, words with similar unctions to ‘而’ appear at the same time. Those are ‘尔’, ‘且’, ‘乃’, etc. ‘尔’ has a homophonic relationship with ‘而’. Therefore, functions that overlap with ‘尔’ should be excluded from the unique function of ‘而’. Next, through comparison with ‘且’ which first appeared in the parallel structure at the time, it was found that the parallel structure of ‘而’ developed while absorbing the parallel function of ‘且’. Next, through comparison with ‘乃’, an adverb that connects both direct and inverse relationships, ‘而’is not an adverb but a conjunction, and furthermore, it is revealed that ‘乃’ has a framework in the resulting structure that can connect both direct and inverse connections at the same time, and it was confirmed that the same applies to ‘而’. Centered on ‘而’, the following phrase shows the result. The preceding phrase indicates various backgrounds for the result, namely cause, method, time, direct, inverse, assumption, condition, state, quality, etc. The multifunctionality of ‘而’ is the result of focusing on the preceding phrase, and when the focus is placed on the next phrase, ‘而’ becomes a conjunction with a single function that represents the result.