Textual Research And Exposition Of Shiming

The treatise does textual research of "Shiming" (based on the commentary of Wang Xian-qian of the Qing Dynasty) by Liu Xi of the Han Dynasty from the angle of etymology. The whole treatise consists of 6 chapters. The first two chapters discuss the author of the book and the time when the book was published. Based on the studies of the predecessors the author of this treatise analyzes in detail and generalizes the election, lay-out and explanation of words of 'Shiming'. The next 3 chapters (from chapter 3 to chapter 5) is the body of the treatise. The author mainly studies the achievement and contribution of Liu Xi's 'Shiming' and analyzes its faults and limitations theoretically, methodologically and practically. In theory, Liu Xi first advanced his view on etymology, that is, "the term or the denotation has its own meaning type respectively" and emphasized that etymology is both objective and knowable. At the same time he put forward the concept of 'the thing type'. Liu Xi not only pushed the argument of term and denotation of pre-Qin days into the sphere of etymology, but also developed and deepened the simple pre-Qin etymological approach. Besides he exposed systematically and thoroughly the multiplying rules of words by deducing the argumentative type of naming things. Compared with the scholars before him and his contemporaries, Liu held a distinct and progressive view on etymology. The methods to study 'Shiming' are mainly as follows, etymological investment according to: A) the clues to the pronunciation and meaning of words;B) the clues to symbols of words;C) the meaning and meaning relation of morphemes;D) culture and etiquette and custom;E) the clues to accents;F) astronomy, geography and historical legends;G) the characteristics of things (including shapes, colours, sounds, qualities of raw materials, positions, functions, quantities and so on). The various research methods and embryonic form of research system provide the later generations with experience to study etymology and help to lay a good foundation for the method system to research the modern etymology. As for paranomastic gloss, because of the extensive use of 'Shiming', it is classified into the category of linguistics and becomes a way of etymological investment, which helps to develop and perfect the method of paranomastic gloss etymological investment. Above all, the treatise believes that the value of 'Shiming' lies in its contribution to the methods to research etymology. As for the concrete conclusions of etymological research for 'Shiming', the author of the treatise, using the methods offered by the modern etymology, verifies them one by one. The result is: in pronunciation, of 1298paranomastic glosses, 1161 are of the same or close relation (accounting for 89.37%), the rest are the same or close either in initial or in final with few exceptions. In meaning, we have collected and adopted 38i paranomastic glosses from 'Shiming' with the same etymological relation which has been verified and recognized by modern etymology researchers, besides we have made textual research of the other 71 paranomastic glosses (the total of the two is 456, accounting for 35.13% of all the paranomastic glosses). The verified result has proved the evaluation of scholars such as Lu Zong-da and Wang Ning and indicated the appraisal of some scholars that 80%—90%of the paranomatic glosses of 'Shiming' are either incorrect or correct does not comply with the fact. In addition, among the explained words collected by 'Shiming', 425 arepolysyllables, 243(accounting of 57%) of which are explained accurately. Moreover 'Shiming' deduced and verifies the etyma of some words, linked a group of words with the same word family and brought to light the etymological thread of some words, which is also a great achievement Liu Xi achieved. Finally, about the faults and limitations, we can find out their causes by learning from the mistakes in paranomatic glosses or analyzing suspicious phenomena so that we can put emphasis on analyzing the following: theoretical faults and limitations of laws of paranomastic gloss, too much dependence upon clues to word forms, misexplanation of reduplications and mistakes of one word two etyma.In the last chapter the author studies polysyllables of the commentary from the angle of linguistic datum value of 'Shiming'. Through analysis, description and statistics he summarizes and generalizes the characteristics of polysyllables of Shiming and makes philological studies of over 100 polysyllables which have not appeared so far in any large Chinese dictionaries.