Abstract:
Book of Songs is the first anthology of poetry in China. Previous studies on this anthology have rarely explored the Object-verb (OV) word order from the perspectives of regional distribution and styles. In terms of regional distribution, the OV word order is primarily found in the thirteen
Guo Feng (
Folk Songs of States) poems other than
Folk Songs of State Qi and
Folk Songs of State Lu. Regarding styles, the use of OV structures, such as interrogative pronouns preposed, negative pronouns preposed, and
zhi 之adopted to form a structure as (
wei唯) O
zhi 之V, is mainly seen in the
Folk Songs of State poems. The usage is associated with common language styles. Comparatively, the structures, like
shi 是V
shi 是V or
wei 唯 O
shi 是V formed with
shi 是, are predominantly found in
Ya (雅
Great Odes) and
Song (颂
The Carols) poems. The employment of the structure in
Ya and
Song corresponds to formal and ceremonial styles respectively. Studying the regional distribution and styles of OV word order in
Book of Songs not only helps in understanding OV word order comprehensively, but also lays the groundwork for research on OV word order in Old Chinese. The studying, especially, contributes to the enrichment and refinement of stylistics with valuable linguistic material.