Chinese Semantic Study On Guang YaShuZheng

Wang Niansun (王念孫) is an important person in our traditional linguistic study. He absorbs advantages from the ancestors while plucks up his courage to question others. Thus, he becomes a remarkable person in Chinese linguistic history. During his life, he had been pushing himself, for ten years, to work at his representative work, namely, GuangYaShuZheng(廣雅疏證). Because of its invaluable worth, it had attracted people's attention from the time it was published till now.In it, Wang Niansun not only proofread GuangYa(廣雅) carefully ,but also gave it a profound illustration. Based on it, he dedicated himself to analyzing the characters and the words involved, in other words, the relationship between the character, the pronunciation and the meaning, thus, to further explore the rule of Chinese language and characters. On the whole, this work not only fully embodied the basic academic theory of Wang Niansun and his son Wang Yinzhi(王引之), that is, "obtaining the words' meaning according to their pronunciation" (因聲求義) but also reflected their primary understanding of Chinese lexics and semantics.Up to now, scholars have made a comprehensive study about it from a documental aspect or a paraphrasing aspect. However, a little work has been done on revealing the semantic ideas lying behind those mass of paraphrasing practices. On the other hand, people' comprehension about the theory of "obtaining the words' meaning according to their pronunciation" is yet not enough. In general, they paid too much attention to the words' pronunciation and meaning but little notice to the words' character. In view of this, and considering scholars 'opinion on constructing the Chinese semantics and developing the traditional philology, in this thesis, the author mean to make a thorough investigation about it, from a Chinese semantic aspect.Firstly, we analyze Wang's basic studying concept of "obtaining the words' meaning according to their pronunciation". By doing this, we strive to complement the study, which has been made by our ancestors and modern scholars, and give an entire clarification of this notable concept. Thus, on the basis of illustrating his success of probing etymology, revealing the interchangeability of words or characters and elucidating binomes, we continue to analyze this illuminating theory by reporting his success of verifying the words' pronunciation in light of their meaning and identifying the words' character in light of their pronunciation and meaning.Secondly, based on the modern theories of lexics and semantics, we explore Wang's semantic ideas contained in GuangYaShuZheng. By doing this, we attempt to explicate its special contribution to Chinese semantic study, thus to add a new material to the theoretic construction of Chinese semantics and deepen people's understanding about it. Considering Wang's paraphrasing practice, especially, we start with his clarification of the words' meaning, which is followed by his discussion of the development of the words' meaning and the exhibition of the words' meaning, and end with his recognition of the inheritance of the words' meaning.At last, in a practical aspect, we make a particular study on Wang's paraphrasing practices. By doing this, we try to explain the significance of GuangYaShuZheng in our traditional literature paraphrasing. At the beginning, we summarize his special seven kinds of paraphrasing methods. Then, we carefully sort out their viewpoint involved with HanShu(漢書). Taking it as an example, we hope to demonstrate their success in making clear the words' meaning involved in ancient literatures.