A Study Of The Meaning Of The Words In Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng

Zhu Junsheng(1788-1855) was one of the four famous specialists on Shuowen Jjiezi(说文解字), his masterpiece Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng (说文通训定声) has very important influence through synthetically study on the meaning of the words, its value exists in showing a turn from scatteredly to systematically, from general interpretation to internal analysis, from gloss and explanation to exploration at evolutional law in studying of traditional semantics, it is not only a comprehensive expression of traditional semantics studying work but also breeding some new ideas of modern semantics studying. This thesis is for the purpose of choosing a proper point of view, uses the scientific theories of modern linguistics to have an overall and thorough analysis of methods, achievements and defects in studying the sense of a word of Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng, in order to supply the studying of history of linguistics with detailed material, also to provide the studying of modern semantics with some theories, materials and methods for reference.The thesis is divided into five chapters. Among them the fourth and the fifth chapter are the major ones. Chapter 1 is an introduction which summarizes the Zhu's life stories, the academic background of his book, a survey of studying of the older generation and the studying aims and methods of this thesis. Chapter 2 is the style of Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng and its role to study the sense of a word. Chapter 3 is the studying original meaning of the book which sums up the methods and values of Zhu's rectifying and supplement to original meaning in Shuowen Jiezi. Chapter 4 and 5 are the major of this thesis. Chapter 4 is studying extended meaning of a word in Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng, we give an overall analysis and appraisal to Zhu's theory of extending, from the semantic component inheritance and shift of view, we analyses thoroughly the extending meaning of nouns, verbs and adjectives and draw three conclusions as follows. firstly, the limited, key, related semantic components are the extending motivation of the three parts of speech about noun, verb and adjective ,these three components have similar mode of motion in different extending, it is the inheritance, divergence, change and combination. In fact, the course of the...