A Study On The Semantic Field Of Verbs Of Sense In Sutra Version By Zhu Fahu

This dissertation is based on the sutra translation by Zhu Fahu of Western Jin dynasty. Zhu Fahu(about 300-400), of Western Yuezhi Kingdom origin, was a authoritative translators of sutras in Western Jin, whose translation was faithful and accurate, ranging from sutra to torah and Tripitaka. Plenty of slang and colloquial words, as well as disyllabic and four-syllabic words, made the sutra succinct and luminous, which has contributed a lot in the spreading of Buddhism and has greatly influenced later translations. Zhu's translations is a precious corpus for the research of Chinese vocabulary, from which we chose 74 categories of sutra (117 volumes and 160,000,000 Chinese characters in all), according to the Newly Edited Catalogue of Chinese Tripitaka. We focus on the semantic field of verbs of senses(of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch)in these sutras.Correspondingly, five sub branches of semantic field of verbs of senses are divided:field of sight, field of hearing, field of taste, field of smell and field of touch. First, we carry out a synchronic survey on these semantic fields. Then, we do a diachronic study, specifically the description in Pre-Qin, Western and Eastern Han and Weijin Period, so as to find out their laws of evolution and the features of commonly. Meanwhile, we probe into the use of monosyllabic verbs and their combinations. We try to give feasible explanations in the light of cognitive theories. So this dissertation merge the methodology of synchronic and diachronic, descriptive and interpretative, quantitative and qualitative, formal and semantic study and contrastive study as well. The dissertation is divided into 6 chapters.Chapter 1 is an introduction, providing information about the background, corpus a the significance, scope, aim, methods and process of this study.Chapter2,3,4,5 focus on the five sub semantic fields. Chapter 2 & 3 mainly explore the semantic field of sight. The former gives a description of 17 verbs of sight synchronically and diachronically, and the latter discusses their combinations. Chapter 4 looks into the semantic field of hearing. Chapter 5 probe into the semantic fields of smell, taste, and touch (only 1 verb of touch, hardly constitute a field).Chapter 6 summarizes the evolution of the semantic field of verbs of sense, the features and causes of the change. The features of the semantic evolution are:stability, imbalance and the uniformity of semantic development. The uniformity of the lexical structure takes the form of disyllabic verbs and the semantic consistency is from external to internal. The internal causes for the evolution are the influence of the semantic system, the ambiguity avoidance law and functionalization. The external causes of the evolution mainly lie in the influence of cognitive and social elements.