It took me quite a while to get my MA thesis scanned, and even longer to post it online. It’s most likely fate in cyberspace is to become AI training material. However, there may be one or two people out there interested in the topic, so here is a link to it.
It would have been better off published in a collection of graduate research work, and at one point a friend offered to include it in a series he was compiling. This would have made it available in University and academic libraries, but I didn’t get it to my friend in time for inclusion. C’est la vie!
The original research direction and questions for the thesis came from graduate coursework I did with Professor Mei Kuang at National Taiwan University from 1984 to 1987. Important practical help and suggestions came from Professor Wei Pei-ch’uan, who was then my classmate in Professor Mei’s courses.
I finished the thesis and defended in April 1990. By that time, I had already been in the Ph.D. program at University of Wisconsin-Madison for over a year and a half. In fact, the UW East Asian Department told me I didn’t need an MA to finish the Ph.D. program, so I probably would have never finished it without the encouragement and help of my UW adviser, Cheng Tsai-fa, to whom I owe more than I can express here.
This is the longest paper I have ever written in Chinese. There are plenty of places where the Chinese and presentation could be improved. At one point I tried to do a light revision to fix some of these problems, but in the end I decided it is better to just put it up as I submitted it. This is the same version of the thesis that is still in the NTU library.
When I typed this, I was using a very iffy combination of software, basically MS-DOS with the Zero One Chinese system, and Word Perfect 4.2 for word processing. I printed it using an Epson dot matrix printer that had a built in Chinese font. This ancient font proved to be difficult to do OCR on, so this is just an image version of the doc. The rest is up to the downloader.
The subject of the thesis is deadly dull stuff for most people, so caveat lector. Do not attempt to read this while driving a motor vehicle. On the other hand, it is an excellent remedy for insomnia.
For those who are interested in the syntax and lexicon of Eastern Han dynasty Chinese, here is the thesis abstract:
國立臺灣大學中國文學研究所碩士論文
鄭玄，趙峙，何休箋注的一些語法特色
指導教授：梅廣先生
研究生：魏伯特 撰
中華民國七十九年四月
論文提要內容
從先秦到東漢時代，古漢語發生了很大的變化。無論是語音，語法，或詞彙，已經不再是先秦的舊面貌。這些變化可以說是上古漢語過渡到唐代白話文的第一步。因此，在漢語史上這是相當重要的一章，本身已經很值得研究。而且，現代漢語很多特色都是這時侯形成的，所以，要了解現代的起源，也必須對這些變化的性質以及產生的次序有一個基本的認識。
本論文的目的是在述說部份東漢語法的變化。所根據的資料是三本東漢的著作：鄭玄 (127-200) 的《毛詩箋》，何休 (129-182) 的《公羊解詁》，趙岐 (106?-201) 的《孟子章句》（除了這三本書以外，也參考了其他注解，如鄭玄的《周禮注》等）。這三本都是東漢學者替先秦古典作的注。利用這些注，一方面可以看出來東漢新興的句型和詞彙，一方面直接與先秦的資料作一對照以襯托出東漢的特色。在方法上，因為這三本書的資料相當多，處理時就藉助於電腦資料庫加以統計與排比。這使本文的討論能比較全面，又能不忽略一些瑣碎的細節。
本文的主要內容如下：第一章談的是資料的問題，如注解寫成的年代，鄭，何，趙三人的語言特色，以及在探討這些特色時所用的方法與理論。第二章以被動句為主。所談的句式包括「於」字句，「見」字句，以及「為…所…」的用法。第三章是以比較句為重點，包括平比，差比，和極比句。第四章講的是疑問詞和句型。疑問詞包括兩類:疑問代詞以及句末疑問詞。前者如「何」「誰」「安」，後者如「乎」「邪」「與」「不」。除此以外，本論文有兩篇附錄：第一篇是鄭箋，趙注何詁的常用詞統計。第二篇裡先把趙注分為兩部份：比較接近通俗語文的「注」，以及比較典雅的「章指」，並加以統計兩者所使用的詞彙以便和鄭，何的統計結果比對。