Проблемы китайского и общего языкознания. К 90-летию С. Е. Яхонтова

 592  David Sehnal   syntactic criteria are taken into account, whereas words belonging to the same class show identical or similar features. The organicity of the whole system and analogy are important auxiliary factors which enable us to classify also words for which we are for the time being lacking enough information. Nikitina divides “full” words of Old Chinese into the following word classes: 1) nouns; 2) adjectives; 3) verbs; 4) numerals; 5) locatives. My classification of the “full” words is as follows: 1) nouns N 2) adjectives ADJ 3) intransitive verbs Vi 4) transitive verbs Vt 5) numerals NUM 6) stative words STAT 7) locatives LOK The division of verbs into two hierarchically equal groups is motivated by different derivational models which are constituted by these two word classes. We can have the transitive verb Vt in the function of intransitive verb vi ( Vt > vi ) and also vice versa ( Vi > vt ). In each of these cases the verbs behave differently, as it will be shown bellow. By the way, Yakhontov writes: “It is possible that it is more convenient to divide predicatives of Old Chinese not into two, but directly into three main groups: transitive verbs, intransitive verbs and adjectives.” My analysis supports this view by Yakhontov which remained unexplained in his book. Stative words are often classified under adjectives, but unlike them they cannot be negated by the negation 不 bù nor by any other negation. They cannot also be used in comparative constructions. Below we analyse the basic features of individual word classes and their syntactic functions in which they are used in the text of Laozi . One has to bear in mind that the same syntactic function can have different semantic content depending on which word class it was derived. E. g. vi < N often means “behave like N”, whereas vi < Vt means “be engaged in V-ing” etc. (See below.) Underlined are words in the relevant function.