A Study On The Phenomenon Of Explaining A Word By A Word Having The Same Character But Different Meaning In Shi Ming

Explaining a word by a word having the same character but different meaning is a special phenomenon of explaining words in ancient books. It is also a special method of explaining words in Shi Ming. Therefore, the former researchers have more or less paid attentions to this phenomenon in Shi Ming.Explaining a word by a word having the same character but different meaning is a method of explaining words, which the explained word reappears in the explaining statement. The explained word reappears in the explaining statement, can be called for the reappearing word. The reappearing word is the key part of the explaining statement. It is used to explore the language source of the explained word. On the surface, this method is to explain the explained word by itself. In effect, the reappearing word and the explained word only have the same character, but differ in meaning, sometimes in pronunciation and part of speech.In Shi Ming, there are 158 examples of this kind. They can be divided into three types: (a) The classical ones, that is "A, A Ye", which explains a word by a worddirectly; (b) The proximately classical ones, that is "A, A Ye, ......A/A AC/AC/CA......", which explains a word by a word first, then explains it by a explainingstatement; (c) The not classical ones, that is "A, ......A/A A/A AC/AC/CA......",which explains a word by a explaining statement.In Shi Ming, the explained word and the reappearing word of this kind of examples, have many relationships. In the aspect of character, there are four relationships: (a) They are the same word but have different meanings; (b) They are different words but have the same character; (c) One of them is an ancient character or a descendent character; (d) One of them uses a character which is used for other words. In the aspect of pronunciation, there are two relationships: (a) They have the same pronunciation; (b)They have similar first sound but the same final sound. In the aspect of part of speech, there are four relationships: (a) They are both nouns; (b) The former is a noun, but the latter is a verb; (c) The former is a noun, but the latter is an adjective; (d) The former is a noun, the latter is a word which is in imitation of some sound. In the aspect of meaning, there are two relationships: (a) They have similar shapes, function or action and so on; (b)They have correlated shapes, function or properties and so on.In Shi Ming, the phenomenon of explaining a word by a word having the same character but different meaning has its own place in history: (a) It is the first time that there are many examples of this kind in a lexicon; (b) The method has also been very much developed in Shi Ming. The phenomenon has its own value: (a) It is a special method; (b) The method also relates with cognitive style, that is, the explanation which the explained word and the reappearing word have similar shapes, function or action is a metaphor, and the explanation which the explained word and the reappearing word have correlated shapes, function or properties is a metonym. The phenomenon has its own defects: (a) It is not easy for the reader to catch on; (b) The explainer and his explanation sometimes are subjective.The method is to explore the language source of a word by a word which has the same or similar pronunciation. This is quite up to the main purpose of Shi Ming. And so it is adopted a lot in Shi Ming.