Study Of Annotation Vocabulary On The Analects Of Confucius In The Medieval Times

The medieval times witnessed significant changes in the vocabulary of Chinese language.From the perspective of Chinese language history,the materials of annotation are of great linguistic value and radical distinction.Through the vein of these annotation materials,oral vocabulary of the time can get known,and also neologisms find their origins.Meanwhile,it is often considered as a valuable reference for research on Chinese language history if a comparison is made between annotations and the annotated literatures,between annotations which were added in different ages to the same literature,or between annotations and other literatures of the same age.Of the various materials of annotations,those of the Analects of Confucius are ones with their own characteristics.As one of the most prominent Confucian classics,The Analects of Confucius has brought about amounts of annotated works since the period of the Han Dynasty.Taking these factors into consideration,we have chosen as the research topic the vocabulary of the medieval annotations of The Analects of Confucius.With the data largely drawn from The Collected Notes on the Analects of Confucius by Yan He and The Interpretations of the Analects of Confucius by Huangkan,this dissertation has for the first time investigated thoroughly the medieval annotations from the perspective of lexicology.It consists of five chapters as follows.Chapter 1 explains first of all the selection of this research topic and its significance.After a brief introduction of The Analects of Confucius itself and of the annotations added in successive generations,together with a literature review of thestatus quo of research on the medieval annotations of The Analects of Confucius,research methodology,criteria for data selection and corpus construction are stated clear respectively.Chapter 2 summarizes the medieval annotations of The Analects of Confucius,coming to find that what the annotations mainly reveal include clear indication of the original style,good command of historical information,proper disposition of previous annotations,and new annotations from the linguistic perspective.Chapter 3 explores monosyllabic words in the medieval annotations of The Analects of Confucius.We have made an exhaustive count of the monosyllabic words in the medieval annotations of The Analects of Confucius and a comparison with those in other works,on the basis of which,we have analyzed the monosyllabic homonyms,conversions,monosemic and polysemic words,unraveling neologisms among monosyllabic words in the medieval annotations of The Analects of Confucius and highlighting the significance for revision work on Chinese dictionaries.Chapter 4 shifts the focus from monosyllabic words to disyllabic ones.Alike to monosyllabic words,an exhaustive statistical work and a comparative analysis have been carried out over disyllabic ones,on the basis of which we have made a close analysis of simple words,compound disyllabic words,modifying disyllabic words,additive disyllabic words,verb-object disyllabic words,supplementary disyllabic words,subject-predicative disyllabic words and solidifying disyllabic words,also discovering neologisms among disyllabic words in the medieval annotations of The Analects of Confucius and highlighting the significance for revision work on Chinese dictionaries.Chapter 5 closes the dissertation.