The Study Of Question-and-answer Form Of The Interpretation Of Comment On Law Of Tang Dynasty

Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty is a criminal code in Tang Dynasty. Since ShangYang had changed Fa to Lv, the emphasis of statutory law in ancient China had always been put on Lv. The code of laws through the ages before Tang Dynasty had been lost, while The law of Yonghui and Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty, the legislation and judiciary interpretation of The law of Yonghui , had been totally preserved into modern times, which makes it the earliest, the most fully-formed and the most representative feudal code of laws in legal system of China, and also the symbol of the maturity and commitment of feudal legality.The main method of law-interpretation in ancient China is to explain in common words. The law commentary in Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty explains the law-articles and the annotation one by one from both law-making and law-executing aspects. This is called authorization interpretation, in which the explanations and the law itself have the same authority. As a model in law-interpretation, Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty not only plays an important role in the history of law, but it is also valuable in Chinese research and linguistic.One of the methods of critical interpretation of Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty is question-and-answer form of law, which means to presuppose difficult cases from justice practice in a way of fictitious dialogue with detailed explanation. There're 178 interpretations in question-and-answer form. This paper will mainly discuss about the context, the program, the methods, the expression and the dialogic features of the critical interpretation.In chapter one, it covers the following aspects of Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty: the formulation and formation; the structure and style; the statue and influence. The history and present of linguistic research ,the value of this research and the theory adapted in this paper are also introduced in chapter one. There are about 240 thousand words in Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty; the structure of chapter-volume-article is adapted in it. It amounts to 12 chapters, 30 volumes and 502 articles, and it is issued for enforcement by combination of the law, the explanation and the commentary. The law and the commentary have a strict structure, a complete stylistic rule, which shows the excellent level and skills in law-making.There are abundant researches on Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty in the field of law-history, while it is quite rare in a pure aspect of linguistic. Some of the researches are included in the books of law history, law comparative and law explanation. The range of linguistic research of Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty is also quite narrow, which mainly focus on words. Most of the researches adopt the method of literature search which investigate the law terms and the word-formation features. Some researches discuss the semantic system of the law terms in Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty by applying the traditional explanation method and the modern semantic theory. The relationship between law and language is very close. The linguistic research of Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty has just started and some fields are rarely involved. So it is in great need to do more and deeper research. I hope that the research on interlocution commentary of Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty will provide experience for the abundance and perfection of research on explanation, grammar history of Chinese, words history, linguistic of law and Chinese pragmatics.Chapter two discusses the relationship between explanation and law, the development of explanation in law, the form of explanation in Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty and the history of interlocution commentary. The law commentary is the process of explain law in ancient China, and the activity of law-explanation has begun since the pre-Qin period. Then there are activities focused on law-explanation from authority or private in the following dynasties, and some of the writings on law-explanation have been passed down. By the combination of well-arranged structure and law-explanation style, Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty achieve the common explanation of law terms, law meanings and the legal principle. Explanation in common expression is the main method used in Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty. Direct explanation and interlocution commentary are both applied. In the part of"discussion", the explanations mainly focus on law terms, law meanings and the legal principle. In the part of interlocution commentary, the question is put forward in the form of difficult case in practice, while the"answer"is the clear adjudication and interpretation on the charge-adscription, the description of crime, the grade of punishment, the principle of law-making and the ideology of law. Both of the two parts shows the specialty of explanation of law, which is regarded as highly stylization in words, uniqueness of some interpretative words and so on. Interlocution commentary is a most important interpretation method in law-explanation. The Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty in Qin dynasty is the oldest existent literature about law-explanation, which is quoted in the law-explanation in Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty.Chapter three mainly discuss the structure and sentence mode of the 178 questions and answers in Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty. The structures include simple sentence, complex sentence and groups of sentences. There are 2 simple sentences, 95 complex sentences (90 multiple complex sentences) and 81 groups of sentences in the"question"part. There are 12 complex sentences and 166 groups of sentences in the"answer"part. In the question part, the complex sentences and groups of sentences take a proportion of 98.9%, while in the answer part, groups of sentences takes a proportion of 93.3%. Questions and answers mainly use the structure of clauses and complex text with many sentences. This shows the feature of language in law that the statement needs to be careful and precise, which leads to the increase of the text information. There are 3 kinds of sentence patterns in the interlocution commentary of Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty (1 imperative sentence, 89 declarative sentences and 184 interrogative sentences). In the interrogative sentences, there are 87 specific interrogations, 8 the positive and negative questions and 2 yes-no questions. The extensive use of specific interrogation and positive and negative question shows the feature of modern Chinese. The interrogative pronouns in interrogative sentences are concentrated on the substantive interrogative pronouns such as"he"(62), predicate interrogative pronouns such as"ruo wei"(23), substantive interrogative pronouns"ji"(2). The positive and negative questions are all use the structure of"verbal components + negative words". The negative word"yi fou"shows up in 76 sentences which take a proportion of 87% and this is more than"fou". The word"yi"has no modifications, which shows that in written language of a law, the language is much more precise and standard.Chapter four criticized and absorbed the context principle, conversational cooperation principle and conversation analysis theory, by which analyzed the context of the question-and-answer form interpretation of Law of Tang Dynasty , the practice of conversational cooperation and the speaking structure. Question-and-answer interpretation was in the form of conversation, which offering a joint between using conversational cooperation principle and conversation analysis theory. Most questions and answers of the question-and-answer interpretation in Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty observed conversational cooperation principles, which made them total-cooperation communication. Meanwhile, some of the dialogues were against principles, but the illocutionary meanings in law was for better observing conversational cooperation principle, so as to optimized the maxim of quality. By using the conversation analysis, we found that the speech forms of Turn Taking in law was complicated, and using Turn Taking based on practical principles had far more communicative functions than raising Turn Taking. On the other hand, all the interfixing forms of Turn Taking were accomplished, which meant no void and no overlapping. The "Turn Taking Pairs" structure was adjacent to question-answer adjacency pairs. Adjacent buildup words and the answering words were orderly arranged in turns, forming adjoining two-member Pattern without intercalation and there was no need to rectify a deviation.Chapter 5 makes a microanalysis inside the interlocution commentary. It discusses the explanation procedure and parlance of the question and answers in interlocution commentary and the specific ways of explanation applied in the answers to the questions. There are four common explanation procedures in the questions and five in the answers, which reflects the feature of highly stylization in the language of law-explanation. Some words in the explanation procedure are very special, such as the inquiry of concrete punishment (hekehezui; geyouhezui; gehehezui; ruoweichufen ) and inserting the presumption of accusation, crimes and punishment in"he…(yi)fou","de…(yi)fou","you…(yi)fou". The explanation in answers mainly applies the citation method, the analogy method, the exemplification method and the comparison method. These method can be combined applied.Chapter 6 is the conclusion. The study of question-and-answer form of the interpretation of Comment on Law of Tang Dynasty is just a beginning of the language research of these documents. We're hoping that there will be more and more profound research on the subject with further excavation of data and deeper investigation.