Generalization Of Ancient Chinese Words Denoting Colours

In the vocabulary of the ancient Chinese, the words denoting colours form a huge group.The group reflects a variety of typical characteristics of the ancient Chinese languages and cultures. Therefore, the research on the ancient Chinese words denoting colours not only helps us get a better understanding of the ancient language structures but also has great cultural and social significance.This thesis is mainly for generalization and gives general description and summarisation for the features, characteristics, generation system, background of the ancient words denoting colours and the relationship between these words and cultures.The thesis is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter,the ancient words denoting colours are sorted and classified according to semantic categories; in the second chapter, the generation and formation ways of the words are summarised and such phenomena as congeners and right-part cognates among the phonograms denoting colours are analysed and illustrated; in the last chapter the development of these words and the relationship between them and cultures are generally described by trying to simply outline the developing track of these words in the historic background of the ancient times and from the angle of the development of human cognition and give prominence to the relationship between these words and human world from the interaction of the words and both social and cultural conditions to deduct and illustrate the clue of development of human thinking. The information of this thesis is collected mainly from the words denoting colours in such ancient books and records as Shang Shu, Shi Jing, Erya, Zhou Li, Shanhai Jing, Fangyan, Shuo Wen Jie Zi, Feng Su Tong Yi, Shiming, etc. with dictionaries as a main tool; besides, the research achievements of predecessors are referred to, such as Denomination of Colours in Ancient Chinese by Zhang Yongyan. Since the ancient works are vast and numerous, the relevant information can not be all collected. At the mean time, for the relatively strict collecting rules and the principle of selectiveness, those words without obvious denotion of colours are excluded; on the other hand, some of the words denoting colours recorded in the ancient dictionaries but seldom used in the ordinary documents are selected, for these words once appeared in the history. The words denoting colours can not be all listed for the limited length of this thesis.