A Study Of The Antonyms In

Yizhoushu is an important ancient classic and recorded in Han Shu Yiwenzhi. Kongchao from the Western Jin Dynasty made the note for Yizhoushu, even now forty-two pieces in today’s existing fifty-nine are noted by him. Then it combined with Jizhong Bamboo book of Zhoushu and named as Jizhong Zhoushu, which is today’s Yizhoushu. Ten volumes are made up the whole book, seventy are main bodies, and one is foreword, total of seventy-one pieces. Among them, eleven pieces are with outline but without content, forty-two pieces were noted by Five Classics master Kongchao, from Jin Dynasty. The content can be divided into four types:historical records, customs records, war records and liturgical books, it recorded those affairs at King Wen of Zhou, King Wu of Zhou, Zhou Gong, Cheng Wang, Kang Wang, Mu Wang, Li Wang and Jing Wang.Antonym is a common paradigmatic relation in pre-Qin Chinese, its semantic relations and state of existence is able to reflect unique characteristics of words and vocabulary system. The paper chooses antonym in Yizhoushu as research objective and reveals general view of antonyms from western Zhou dynasty to the spring and autumn period and the warring states period through 269 pairs of antonyms. Based on that, it also analyzes the semantic phenomenon, then discovers general features and draws basic rules.This thesis is divided into five parts. The introduction of Chapter 1 briefly describes completion time, research history and current situation of Yizhoushu, and confirms the criterion and principle of antonym in Yizhoushu. Under the same criterion and principle, total 269 pairs of antonyms are determined upon conceptual meaning and contextual meaning, In Chapter 2, a static description is given about the classification and existing way of the 269 pairs of antonyms in Yizhoushu. From the perspective of syllable, monosyllable antonyms account for 70% of the all antonyms, leading in absolute majority; while disyllable antonyms also exist. Thus it can be seen that disyllable antonyms have already sprouted since the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn period, and the Warring States Time. From the perspective of the word characteristic, antonyms in Yizhoushu mainly exist in the form of adjective and noun. The verb antonyms are less, and only several adverbs and numerals are available.The third chapter classifies and describes the state of existence of antonyms in Yizhoushu. There are 96 pairs of antonymous dui wen in total, occupying 36% of all antonyms in the full text; 103 pairs of antonymous lian wen in total, occupying 38% of all antonyms in the full text. Dual-purpose usage of dui wen and lian wen occurs 6 times, and there are 89 pairs of negational antonyms, which occupies 33% of all antonyms in the full text; there are 19 pairs of language antonyms, which occupies 7% of all antonyms in the full text;The fourth chapter concludes the characteristics of the description of antonyms in Yizhoushu in the first two chapters as well as the role it plays in terms of figure of speech. It can be seen that the antonyms in Yizhoushu occupy a high percentage in Pre-Qin literature of the same kind. The monosyllable antonyms are in a overwhelming majority, while antonyms often appear in argumentative contents, and malconformation exists in aspects of syllables, parts of speech and associative relation.At last, it concludes the main contents explored in the thesis, and puts forward issues that need to be tackled.