Quantitative Research on the Syntactic Structure of Tang and Song Prose Based on a Corpus — With a Discussion on the Evolutionary Laws of Classical Chinese Special Sentence Patterns
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Abstract
By applying quantitative analysis to Tang and Song prose, this study maps the syntactic evolution of classical Chinese. A 3.5- million-character syntactic corpus of Tang and Song prose is constructed, and quantitative methods such as frequency statistics and significance tests of differences are combined with vertical comparison and horizontal analysis to systematically explore the evolutionary characteristics of basic syntactic structures and special sentence patterns. The results show that basic syntactic structures exhibit a trend of significant increase in attributive-head structures and slight decrease in subject-predicate and coordinate structures. Special sentence patterns follow the laws of form simplification, marker intensification, and word-order regularization. The proportion of “bei” passive sentences rises from 8.7% in the Tang Dynasty to 15.2% in the Song Dynasty, while the proportion of “zhe...ye” judgment sentences decreases by 22.9%. Syntactic evolution is influenced by internal factors, including grammatical coordination and semantic precision demand, and external factors, including social change, the Ancient Prose Movement, and spoken-language penetration. The corpus and annotation framework provide methodological support for classical Chinese teaching, ancient book collation, and Chinese language history research.
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