A Study Of Synonymous Noun In Jingde Chuandeng Lu

This essay takes Jingde Chuandeng Lu, a Zen book edited and written by Monk Shi Dao Yuan of North Song Dynasty, as its object of study. It concentrates, through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, on synchronic descriptions in detail on the synonymous nouns and nouns with same meanings in Jingde Chuandeng Lu.First, the essay gives clear definition of and the methods to determine synonyms, and under the guidance of such definition and methods, 249 groups of nouns in synonym are classified. Then it tries to show how they are aggregated as groups and how they are differentiated.Secondly, this essay, after having studied the 249 groups of synonymous nouns via classification of semantic field and at the angle of new-word-new-meaning, shows that, a religious classic as Jingde Chuandeng Lu is, the classification of semantic field in this book, only in so far as its nouns are concerned, is of complexity, and that Zen, as a religious faction, had given attention to the life of ordinary people. It also shows that there are much more new words in dual syllable in Jingde Chuandeng Lu, which are either of new resources, or endowed with new meaning by old words or newly built via simplification. Above all, a larger part of them are newly formatted by making use of the existing linguistic materials.