Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Genuineness And Love: A Study Of Feng Menglong's Collection Of Mountain Songs (Shan'ge 山歌), Yujia Ye

Masters Theses

Shan’ge 山歌 is a collection of popular songs in Wu dialect by the late Ming scholar Feng Menglong 冯梦龙 (1574-1646). Due to a lack of detailed literary analysis of the songs, and a lack of appreciation of these songs from the perspective of rhetorical aesthetics, I aim to provide a close reading of the siqing (私情) songs in Shan’ge. With the intention to offer a fresh perspective into the depiction of emotions and sentimental feelings, as well as the various ways of presenting the people’s perception of love and sexual desire in these songs, I endeavor to both enrich …

A Study On The Mutual Replacements Of Three Des In Chinese Blogs, Hui Sha

Masters Theses

Three des, as structural particles in Chinese, are phonologically the same, but written differently. Through analyzing the written forms of these three homophonous particles, the research has come to some valuable conclusions that cannot be obtained by only observing the speaking language of Chinese. This paper studies the relationships among three “des” (de1 as “的”; de2 as “地”; de3 as “得”), which function as structural particles in the written language of Chinese, by examining their mutual replacements in blogs. The research regards every living language as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) with continuing changes. So this study’s perspective not only …

The Phonological System Of A Xin'an Idiolect, Shuiying Lu

Masters Theses

My idiolect, a Xin’an idiolect, belongs to the Wuxi dialect, which is the northern Wu dialect. It carries most of the characteristics of the Wuxi dialect, such as the tripartite division of the manner of articulation of initial stop consonants. However, with the special geographic position, on the bounty of Wuxi dialect from the northwest area to southeast area and connected with Suzhou city, my idiolect shows its unique features, such as the condition of the retroflex. This study analyzes the phonological system of the idiolect and discusses the features. Since the dialect of the suburban area of the Wuxi …

A Textbook-Based Study On Measure Word Acquisition In Learners Of Chinese As A Second Langauge, Shaofang Wang

Masters Theses

The Chinese language features a rich class of words called measure words that serve as units for counting objects and actions. In comparison with English and other Indo-European languages, Chinese makes much more extensive use of measure words. American students who study Chinese as a second language often find it hard to acquire the usage of Chinese measure words. To obtain a comprehensive and objective evaluation of students’ measure words acquisition, I designed an experiment where measure words as introduced in Integrated Chinese are collected.

In the current study, measure words are divided into two categories by their semantic features: …

Youth Narrative In Feng Tang's The Beijing Trilogy, Mingjia Zhang

Masters Theses

In the past fifteen years, the Beijing writer Feng Tang has enjoyed great popularity, especially among young readers. As a versatile writer, he published not only novels but also essays and poems. His representative work is the semi-autobiographical The Beijing Trilogy which depicts the coming-of-age of a boy named Qiushui and his friends. The main theme of this trilogy is the growth of youth and thus establishes a youth narrative. Based on a close reading of the trilogy, this paper aims to explore the true nature of the youth narrative that Feng Tang presents in his The Beijing Trilogy. …

Buddhist Depiction Of Life In The Verse Of The Tang Dynasty Poet Han Shan, Sijia Niu

Masters Theses

The present works of reading Chinese poetry offers a biographic reading method, but it cannot fit for reading Han Shan’s poetry, as he had unclear recording in history. Focused on exploring the persona and religion in Han Shan’s poetry world, I examine reading Han Shan’s poems in Buddhist way. Chapter 1 provides the biography of Han Shan, and presents his vernacular expression as different from other poets in history. Chapter 2 introduces some new methods on reading poetry brought up by some literature critics. Chapter 3 presents the Buddhist reading method that I have adopted to read and understand Han …