Research On The Kernel Words In The Dynasty Of Wei And Jin

One of the most important work of the Chinese history study, the study of the"Kernel Words", was fully carried out with the focus of the kernel noun and verb selected from the"Swadesh 100-word list"in the period of the dynasty Wei and Jin through the research of the local and sutra reference that time by the combination of both the Synchronic and diachronic linguistic method and Computer-assisted method according to the Semantic Field theory. The study highly enriched the production of the vocabulary study of Middle Ancient Chinese and was valuable for the establish of a scientific Chinese vocabulary history and the kindred relationship confirmation of the Sino-Tibetan Family Languages.The dissertation is about 240,000 words, and composed of five chapters: Chapter one is the"introduction", comprehensively introduced the history and status of"kernel words"study and the general situation, meaning, research material and methods of the of the study of the Dynasty Wei and Jin's vocabulary. In Chapter two, the noun was discussed by dividing into three kinds. The first kind was about the body, which consisted of these four types: head, limb, trunk and others. This kind of noun involved twenty-seven kernel conception of twenty-three body semantic fields and covered about 130 nouns. This kind of noun was the most active elements. The second kind was about human, plant and animal, which consisted of 11 kernel words and involved about 80 words. The three kind was about nature phenomenon, which consisted 15 kernel words of 14 semantic field, involved 115 words. Compared with the first kind of nouns, the other two kind nouns were more stable and with more complex semantic field structure because of the society culture and classified methods'affection. In Chapter three, the kernel verbs were studied by dividing into these three kinds: action of head, moving and living, cognitive behavior and social activities. There were 19 semantic fields studied and involved 166 verbs. The study indicated that the representative verbs of a semantic fields varied with high frequency and most of the representative verbs were about the action of human. The study also indicated that the structure of the semantic fields varied greatly: some were very complex while some were simple. There are many relationship between two semantic fields.In the four chapter the characters of the kernel words in the dynasty of Wei and Jin were discussed. In chapter five, the whole study was sum up and some conclusions were drawn and the topics need more study were brought out.Main contribution and innovation of this dissertation:(1) It's an initiation to study the kernel words in the dynasty of Wei and Jin with the utility of the"Swadesh 100-word list"and the characters of these kernel words were figured out: they succeeded the ancient kernel words and developed continuously; the variation was reflected firstly in sutra references, meanwhile, the variation also could be found in medicine reference" reserve urgent side of elbow "《肘后备急方》; in the whole Chinese history, the dynasty Wei and Jin was a key period of kernel words when the most notable variation happened and most of the variation were about human body, which incarnated the man-based conception.(2) The combination of static description and diachronic analyse method was taken. After comprehensive analyse of typical references in the dynasty of Wei and Jin, the features of the kernel words that time were described and the description involved the kernel words'status about their pronunciation, semanteme, grammar, usage, frequency of utilization, syntagmatic relationship, associative relationship and scope of application, etc. Based on the study, the kernel words'origination and development were studied with the historical perspective of the Chinese vocabulary history. The combination of the static description and the diachronic analyse brought out a way to understand the kernel words that time more deeply.(3) The combination of the Computer-assisted method and the manual discrimination method. Considering the numerous and jumbled status of the references in the dynasty of Wei and Jin and the high frequency the kernel words used, to classify them one by one was impossible. The computer-assisted method could be used to search the references and discriminate the kernel words, then the succeed analyse could be done and the words'utility frequency could be figure out convincingly.(4) The principle to confirm a members of semanteme field was put forward by the need of studying. It was the base of the semanteme field study and could affect the conclusion to confirm the semanteme field's member. In the study, the member of a semanteme was confirmed according to these principles: The relationship of sememes should be confirmed referring to their most primary character; the nature of the semanteme field the kernel represented should be fully considered; the different sememes of a word with more than one sememes should vest in their semanteme field respective; the uncommon word should be listed seldomly; generally the members were monosyllabic word.(5) Utility of cross-disciplinary achievement. It was a great characteristic to study the Chinese kernel word with the cognitive linguistics theory. Cognitive linguistics is a new discipline brought forth in the last 20 years in foreign linguistics field. It was valuable to study the kernel words with the cognitive linguistics theory. The principles and concepts of cognitive linguistics, such as"prominence view","attentional view", Categorization theory, Chunking theory, Event-domain Cognitive Model, Metonymy mechanism and cognition mapping law, was used in the study of kernel words and the difficulty without answer before could be resolved. What's more, the comparative linguistics also used in the study.