"xunzi" Vocabulary Study

As an important classic of the late Warring States Period, Xunzi, with its large vocabulary and colloquial language style, can roughly reflects the glossarial features of late Old Chinese and is one source of later standard documentary language and numerous colloquial words, thus having a great value of research. Since the Tang Dynasty, Xunzi has been interpreted by scholars of each period, even including the great master Wang Niansun, but generally the achievements in studying the glossary of Xunzi are mainly embodied in those exegeses. Taking the whole vocabulary of Xunzi as overall research object, carrying on complete investigation, statistics, induction, and analysis, and then comprehensively exploring and systematically studying its vocabulary, such an academic practice has not yet been conducted. It can be safely said that the study of the vocabulary of Xunzi is still a virgin land in the field of Xunzi Research and Old Chinese glossary research.Against the above background, the paper chooses the glossary of Xunzi as the research object. Our intention is to ail-roundly describe the lexical system of Xunzi and to probe the law of its development, so as finally to bring our work under the research frame of the history of the Chinese language. In specific research, the paper not only absorbs the achievements of traditional critical interpretation of ancient texts, but also makes full use of the viewpoints and approaches of modern linguistictheory, so as to combine diachronic with synchronic and static with dynamic, and to interpret some lexical phenomena on the basis of overall description. At the same time, the paper reflects on and explore multiple reading words, synonyms, antonyms, and some other issues in meaning study, and the purpose is, by providing some materials for Old Chinese lexical research, to contribute more or less to the development of the history of both the Chinese language and its glossary.The paper consists of seven chapters.Chapter One is the exordium, mainly introducing the life of Xun Zi and the spread of Xunzi, and discussing the choice and the current research situation of the subject and the corresponding studying methods. Besides, it also illustrates the division of the history of the Chinese language, the selection of linguistic corpus, and the determination of the expected version.Chapter Two is on the study of the basic vocabulary of Xunzi, in which the paper thoroughly takes statistics of the basic words of each category, and focuses on the analysis of nominal basic words. In the process of analysis, according to the notional categories indicated by lexical meanings, the paper divides nominal basic words into nineteen groups, and then analyses these different groups and discusses corresponding verbs and adjectives. Through such a research, it is fairly easy to notice the relationship between the different components of basicwords, and to observe the influence of social, historical, and cultural factors on words.Chapter Three focuses on the study of the multiple reading words in Xunzi. Drawing on the experiences of predecessors and taking into consideration the actual research situation of Xunzi glossary, the paper first sums up five practical criteria for determining multiple reading words, on the basis of which their distribution is discussed in terms of both syllables and grammar. And then the paper, following the approaches of modern linguistics, systematically analyses and describes the multiple reading words in Xunzi, of which the composition of compound words is particularly tackled from the angles of meaning and parts of speech, and at the same time a number of special structure types are examined preliminarily. Finally, as a result of comparing with some significant classics, it is held that the formation of multiple reading words was enhanced in the late Warring States Period and the speed was also obviously raised, but the meanings of those words were comparatively simplex and the structure levels of the compounds were also fairly simple.Chapter Four mainly deals with the meaning study of Xunzi. Above all, three principles in the study are determined, and more profound research on the meaning of Xunzi is carried out. Polysemy of words is first discussed, and through the comparison with Zuozhuan, it isconcluded that this phenomenon is much more common in the late Warring States Period than in the early period, and not only was the number of monosyllable polysemous words increased, but also there appeared polysemous multiple reading words, which indicates that the development of multiple reading words is clearly speeded up. Then the paper emphasizes on the evolution of the glossary of Xunzi. Here the paper first analyses the causes of the evolution from the aspects of society, human cognition, and linguistic reality, and then discusses the channels of the meaning evolution, of which meaning extension types and the consequent shifts of meaning are focused on. The above research more or less breaks through traditional contributions in this field.Chapter Five is intended to study the synonyms in Xunzi. First of all, the general research situation of Old Chinese synonyms is looked back, and a number of focuses in this field are explored, thus determining such key issues as taking glosseme as the unit of studying synonyms, and synonyms being the synonymous phenomena within the same glossarial system. Next, the paper, conforming to the practice of studying the synonyms in Xunzi, puts forth the approaches of distinguishing Old Chinese synonyms, analyses the distribution of the synonyms in Xunzi in terms of syllables, grammar etc., and carries out classified discrimination towards those synonyms. Discrimination is the keystone in this chapter, and the distinctive features of synonyms are grouped into sixteen types,each of which is supported by illustrations so as to guarantee the sufficiency of truthfulness.Chapter Six tackles the study of the antonyms in Xunzi. The general research situation of antonyms is first briefly introduced, several hot spots in this realm are also discussed, the necessity of observing the practical usage of words in defining antonyms is then made clear, and finally the case of verbs and adjectives constituting antonyms is analysed with a fairly appropriate explanation. After that, the paper proposes a few practical methods of determining Old Chinese antonyms, probes the distribution of the antonyms in Xunzi in terms of syllables, grammar etc., and analyses the types of those antonyms. At last, the paper discusses the semantic relationship and the corresponding relationship of the antonyms in Xunzi, and analyses the causes leading to the imbalance of the corresponding relationship of those antonyms.^TChapter Seven deals with Xun Zi's linguistic thinking. Xun Zi being a forerunner of the Chinese linguistics, his linguistic thinking is explored from eight aspects, and it is believed that he once profoundly considered many contemporary linguistic issues and that his thinking is a treasure in the Chinese linguistic theory/]In summary, on the basis of the textual collation and interpretation by previous sages towards Xunzi, the paper conducts overall investigation on Xunzi glossary, and reveals the features of the glossary and the tracesof their change and development. While regarding the research on the noumenon of the glossary of Xunzi, the paper investigates the social background of the glossary's generation with the intent to uncover the rich historical and cultural significance embodied in the glossary. As the foundation work to study the history of the Chinese language, the paper fills in a blank in the research of Old Chinese special textual glossary, thus reaching a high academic level and at the same time possessing a great academic value.