Digitization Of GuangYaShuZheng And Study Of Cognate Character

Making use of the latest Extensible Markup Language (XML) to research archaic Chinese books is a new realm of computer-aided research into archaic Chinese. From the case of GuangYaShuZheng, we testified that XML can help us withdraw linguistry under the current technical conditions. Our work has special reference to applying XML to research archaic Chinese. Our modern etymology research benefited from the research of scholars in Qing Dynasty. In QianJia period, scientific etymology theories hadn't been founded .Not word, but character, was regarded as fundamental linguistic structural unit at that time. This theory influenced the linguistic exegesis of classical scholars, who collected lots of cognate characters instead of cognate words. From diachronic view, Wang Nina-sun and his son intended to discover lots of cognate characters systems in archaic Chinese through Guangyashuzheng. This system can be divided into three subsystems: variant characters system, borrowed characters system, and cognate words system. Wang regarded character as word, so confused cognate words with variant characters and borrowed characters. And the jargon he used does not differentiate three subsystems. One reason for this is that three subsystems can transform each other,another is that Wang annotate with the text. In order to making use of the production of GuangYaShuZheng well, we should distill the fruit of cognate characters systems, and then sort them with the view of cognate words. Variant character and borrowed character both represent a same word, and should combine to one cognate words system. We should attach importance to the fruit of variant characters system and borrowed characters system, which are crucial to neatening Chinese characters and inquiring into the derivation.