The Study Of Vocabulary In Classical Notes Of Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty, with booms of politics, economy, culture, education, national communication and other fields, is a rapidly developmental stage in Chinese history. Above all, a Confucian school of idealist philosophy of the Song and Ming Dynasty emerged and grew up, renovating the traditional cultures and traditional ideology. On one hand, the progress of languages is affected by the development of society. That’s why Song Dynasty plays a vital role in history of Chinese language, during the evolution from ancient times to modern times, in the process of Classical Chinese fading and Vernacular Chinese arising. From then on, Chinese got in a new stage. On the other hand, any tiny social changes were embodied in the change of language, especially vocabulary. Comparing with Song Dynasty’s important historical status, the existing literature on colloquial language of Song Dynasty is not so much as supposed to be, which disadvantaged correlative studies. However, the classical notes of Song Dynasty make up for the deficiency with its extensive quantity, broad scope, coexsistence of both written language and oral language, and elaborate materials of authors’ studies. The descendants can learn from these materials, make use of them and keep working on them. For historians, the notes testify historical facts and fill the blanks; for litterateurs, the notes of Song Dynasty show the reality of literary world and reflect the literary thoughts then; for culture scholars, the notes help to investigate social lives and customs in various regions; for linguists, the notes help to draw an outline of language in Song Dynasty, to collect scattering research results, to conclude lingual research theories and methods, to broaden the range of lingual study. And thus, The main thought of this thesis is designed: take notes of Song Dynasty as basic language corpus, history of Chinese vocabulary development as background,we focus on vocabulary in notes of Song Dynasty with a comprehensive view on studies of language, politics, history, culture, philology,etc.. We selected several Song Dynasty notes and studied their vocabulary from lexical explanations, lexical systems, lexical theories and lexical values, we studied vocabulary evolution from selected notes, and other diachronic notes literature and corpus,and furthermore to make it a comprehensive study of history, culture and literature.The corpus of classical notes in Song Dynasty is of extrordinaryly high value bucause it features with combination of invesigation and context, mandarins and dialects, synchronic study and diachronic study, fragmentation and system. Synchronically speaking, Song vocabulary is a mixture of past and present, home and abroad, classical and vernacular Chinese. Neologism, dialecticism, religious words, loanwords, idioms and colloquial words reserved in numerous notes,complementing Zhuzi’s language category and ana of Zen, make up the insufficiency of documents recording spoken language of Song Dynasty. According to corpus traits, principles of researching vocabulary in notes of Song Dynasty are set up as follows. First, researching vocabulary with philological methods. Second, understanding oral expression in notes of Song Dynasty correctly. Third, discussing idioms centering on life style and customs. Forth, depicting and explaining semantic change, lexical formation basis and formation history while making vocabulary criticisms and explanations. Fifth, giving consideration to tracing the source of contemporary Chinese dialects while studying dialects and idioms of Song Dynasty. What we are working on is a successively in-depth research from vocabulary explanation to vocabulary system, from factual analysis to summary of methodology, and a study from theory to application.Making lexical investigation and explanation is bound to classify vocabulary on the ground of each word. Neologisms in notes of Song Dynasty record every aspect of civil life then objectively such as the prosperity of industry and commerce; the perfection of imperial examination; domestic strife and foreign aggression of military; moreover, a reflection of life of emperors, generals, ministers and elites, their food, clothing, housing and transportation, various folk customs. Genernally speaking, major characteristics of neologism in notes of Song Dynasty, in linguistics, are as follows. New words with new meanings and new words with old meanings coexist. Analogy became the main way of word building. The motivations out of language rules prompt the emergence of new words and new meanings. The contents of dialecticisms include the inquiry of the sense of words and semantic changes, recognition of word written form and pronunciation, and analysis of vocabulary formation, refering to history facts, about their, original characters, formation basis and formation history. You can find investigation about dialects in Song Dynasty and about the source of modern northern dialects. In addition, some words and expressions reveal unique local conditions and customs in south of the Five Ridges, such as population, production, handicrafts, basic necessities, weddings and funerals, personal believes, etc.. By Song Dynasty, religion spread and culture communication had been a long history. The combination of three religions had taken shape. A lot of religious words and loanwords came into being. In Song notes, there are not only Buddhism and Taoism dedicated terms, most of which have single meaning and rare extension limited to religious environment, but general words from earthly literature to Buddhist and Taoist literature and then to earthly literature again. Those general words realized twice revise of meaning after religious upgrade and then developing beyond religious environment. Some words are results of evolution under the influence of Buddhist and Taoist culture. The loanwords in notes show the diverse characteristics of sources. Some of them come with Buddhism, some from foreign languages, while some are from Chinese minority languages. The idiomatic phrases in notes of Song Dynasty are abundant, including lots of idioms, proverbs, locutions, jargons and argots. The formation history of idioms, proverbs, locutions and the difference between literary argots and folk argots reflect the trend of the opposition, integration and interactive development of classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese, their elegance and vulgarity. There are both classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese in notes of Song Dynasty, although the classical Chinese is the main part. Colloquial words in notes reflect the development of colloquial words in Chinese language, mirroring common life and displaying the gradation of colloquial words. It is the need of studying lexical system to sum up the groups of common colloquial words in notes, except analyse the objective gradation of vocabulary. In addition, research on colloquial words in one certain dynasty complements the study of common words’ evolution. The study of colloquial words’ gradation is all-sided investigation covering judgment of lexical eras, classification of vocabulary, tracing source of vocabulary and inquiry of meanings. By the means above, we did a case study of lexical gradations about appellations of relatives and nouns of human body organs in notes of Song Dynasty.Study on lexical theory is on the foundation of making vocabulary investigation and explanations. On one hand, we induced methods of lexical study authors of notes of Song Dynasty used trying to investigate and explain language phenomenon. Some modern academic methodolgy are applied in the corpus, such as understanding word meaning by its pronunciation, proving the meaning of dialect, explaining the ancient annotations, identifying characters and distinguishing pronunciations, tracing the source of words, looking for lexical formation bases, comparing the ancient with the modern and multi-proof. On the other hand, our study conclusion tries to reveal several rules of vocabulary evolution, to name a few, connatation and denotation of a man is an integral part of nature, the writing mirrors the writer; the outside expresses the inside, an example of lexicalization of phrases about gestures and behaviors; common explanations of languages and evolution of semanteme; symmetrical characteristic of language and evolution of Chinese vocabulary. Study on vocabulary in notes of Song Dynasty provides linguistic proof for notes literature collection. Based on our conclusion of lexical study and sorted materials from the investigated notes, we also indicate some problems, such as some words whose meaning is not clear, but different words have similar characteristic and related meaning; wrong punctuation, false proof-reading or omissive proof-reading caused by unknown characters and unknown background of creation. Furthermore, study on vocabulary in notes of Song Dynasty contributes a lot to Lexicography, which plays a significantly supplementary role in taking down entries, setting up senses, quoting and paraphrasing when compiling and revising large-scale Chinese dictionaries.