Research On The Words And Expressions Of "Guwangyan"

The vernacular Chinese novel Guwang Yan of early Qing dynasty was written against distinct historical background,by an undisputed author and with a clear edition.Its author and creation time are explicit,and it is lack of fabrication by others with pure language,therefore,it can reflect the real language appearance of early Qing dynasty.The dissertation focuses on the vocabulary of the novel and carries out a systematic description of and research into its constitution,morphology,semantic system,swearwords,metaphors,etc.based on related theories like the history of Chinese lexicology so as to reveal the real situation of the vocabulary of vernacular Chinese in the early eighteenth century within the framework of the historical development of Chinese lexicology.In addition to the introductory part,the dissertation is divided into three parts from overall arrangement to case study.The first part includes three chapters,which belongs to the overall research discussing the structure,morphology and semantic system of the vocabulary of the book.The second part has two chapters discussing the characteristic use of metaphors and swearwords,both of which are common social dialects.The third part also has three chapters exploring some obscure words and discussing the value of the book in the compilation of dictionaries and the collation of ancient books on that basis.Part One of the dissertation focuses mainly on the study of general vocabulary in Guwang Yan.The first chapter of this part mainly discusses the constitution of the vocabulary.The old words and new words in the book are reviewed from a diachronic point of view including illustrating the time and level of old words and its ways of absorbing old words,counting the new words which have new forms and new meaning and the new word which have old forms but new meaning,analyzing the social cultural pattern their meaning reflect,pointing out that new words and expressions can reflect closely the social development.Then the paper will study the words of regional dialects,foreign words,and words of different trades and words of different social groups,etc.from the perspective of synchronic linguistics,including analyzing the geographical distribution of the words of regional dialects and pointing out the causes of their coming into being,exploring the spread and development of dialect words in the book based on the former discussion,describing the words of different trades and social idiom etc.,analyzing the sources and the formation of the foreign words lastly.The second chapter of Part One discusses morphology of the vocabulary in the book.This chapter takes two-syllable,three-syllable and four-syllable words as the subject of the study.Based on the static description of their structure,the important vocabulary phenomena of allotropy and redundancy are analyzed.First,allotropy of two-syllable words of the book has been depicted in terms of parts of speech,structure and semantics.Then these words have been contrasted and compared with those from Grand Chinese Dictionary and Modern Chinese Dictionary so as to understand their time of emergence and their existence in modern Chinese.The general tendency of two-syllable evolution of Chinese lexis is revealed.Second,redundancy in three-syllable words is discussed.The main functions of these words are to supplement the linguistic style and stress,and clarify the meaning.Their main mechanism of existence abides by the principles of semantic similarity or semantic proximity.Besides,allotropy of four-syllable words has been analyzed in a concise way to make up for the study of allotropy of two-syllable words.Finally,the repetitive forms of ABB and AABB have been examined,which shows the latter form is more frequent than the former ones.The third chapter of Part One discusses the semantic system and the evolution mechanism of the book through case study.In light of concept field theory of Chinese historical lexicology,four groups of concepts like hacking type,lifting type,ignorant type,and tableware type from the book are picked out.In terms of their range of using,the characters of their controlling objects,their positions in sentences,and their ability in building vocabulary,the identity of each member of the four concept groups has been determined.Through summarizing the four concepts,the semantic system and the hierarchical relations of vocabulary are discussed.Part Two deals mainly with the characteristic words in Guwang Yan.The first chapter of this part analyzes the problems of the swearwords in an exhaustive manner.Based on what swearwords denote,the chapter has classified them,which in turn facilitates the microscopic analysis,origin tracing and exploration.Besides,synchronic and diachronic contrast and comparison have been employed with the swearwords from A Dream of Red Mansions and from modern Chinese on the basis of analyzing the internal structure and generalizing the characteristics of these words.This has been done from two steps.First,the developmental clues can be found from the change of nonessential words.For example,such factors as social development and dialect background can affect the variation of swearwords.Second,in terms of swearwords from the book,the chapter tries to probe into the educational,cultural and social background of the author.From the stability of the core swearwords,one can determine the general character of the emergence of swearwords.Chapter Two concentrates on argot in Guwang Yan.Argot is used by certain social groups who are unwilling to let outsiders know what they're talking about.The chapter takes the metaphoric forms of the argot as the research subject,employing qualitative and quantitative analysis with concrete linguistic data in a small closed system.Based on decoding some perplexing metaphors,their structural patterns are generalized,their contributing factors exposed,their theoretical grounding revealed,and their cultural connotations disclosed.In brief,the situation and characteristics of the argot against the social background of the early Qing dynasty are showcased and relevant questions of the development of the argot settled.Part Three mainly discusses the value of lexical research of Guwang Yan.In the first chapter of this part,the value of the words from the book in the compilation of dictionaries has been explored.Some words from the book have been explored and explained combing with the relevant theories of traditional exegesis,philology and motivation,and on such a basis,with referring to Grand Chinese Dictionary,CCL,BC,,the important complementary role that Guwang Yan plays in its entries including,sense establishment,citation and interpretation etc,has been pointed out.Chapter Two sums up the value of lexical research of Guwang Yan in lexicography and literature.Examples are taken from the book to show the problems like the lapses of failure in proof-reading,misses in double-checking in the specification for unknown morphology.Chapter Three generally discusses the vital part that the words and expressions of the book play in ethnic,religious and customary study.In a word,the language used in Guwang Yan is colloquialized written Chinese,which reflects the lexical characteristics of vernacular Chinese novels in early Qing.The research,therefore,will not only provide rich information for Chinese historical lexicology,but also offer new evidence for some previous research so as to rectify mistakes from these researches.