“乃”的词义演变探讨

The Exploration of the Meaning Evolution of “Nai”

通过考察从殷商到现代汉语时期文献资料上的"乃"字使用情况,了解"乃"从实词到虚词的发展过程。殷商时期"乃"表示"你"、"你的"含义,随后语法意义不断增强,成为古代汉语中常见的虚词之一。近现代以来,除了由"乃"组成的双音节词仍作为连词使用,"乃"基本已经退出了语言的舞台。

Through the investigation from the Shang Dynasty to modern Chinese literature on the use of the word ＂Nai＂;,the paper ex-plores its process of evolution from notional word to function words. The meaning of“Nai”is“you”or“your”when it is used as a notional word in Shang Dynasty and it belongs to the basic vocabulary actually. however,with the evolution of future generations and with its gram-matical meaning constantly enhancing and lexical meaning relatively narrowing ,the word of“Nai”blurs gradually so that it had become a common function word in ancient china .In modern time,the using frequency of“Nai”significantly reduced.