Wang Ruo Linguistic Research

During the period from Song to Yuan, a Confucius school of idealistphilosophy came to prosperity,with a low tide of Pu Xue of Han Dynasty.Since Confucian scholars of Qing Dynasty, people generally make a lowappraisal of linguistics of the period, regarding as a decline period ofthe history of linguistics. But during that time there were some expertswho can be recorded in the linguistics history , learned and famous , ofwhom Wang Ruoxu was one. Wang Ruoxu ( 1174-1243) , a famous literary criticof Jin Dynasty, dominated the literary field decades in Jin Dynasty, andpreferred to argument. There is a book of his named the Collects ofHunanyilao today, which reflects his thoughts of language.It still lacks systematic research on Wang's linguistics at present,consequently this article takes the Collects of Hunanyilao as the researchobject,analyzing and summing up the language materials in it ,anddissertating his achievement of linguistics in a method that combinesmodern linguistics theories with traditional linguistics theories, fromcollation , critical interpretation of an ancient text , grammar,and soon. At the same time ,the article analyzes the limitations and lacks ofhis linguistics , in the hope of appraising his linguistics value properlyand offerring some valuable materials for the linguistic history of theperiod from Song to Yuan.The article includes four parts: Chapter one introduces Wang Ruoxue'slife, works,and appraisal on his works. Chapter two,Wang Ruoxue'slinguistics achievement, mainly includes three respects such ascollation , critical interpretation of an ancient text , grammar. Incollation, it is abundant in content that is collated, and there is a clearlogic idea. His collating methods are comparatively scientific andedition collation , collation compared with the context of the book ,collation compared with other books , collation from reason have been usedfar and wide.The terms such as edition of books , rare book , used earlierduring the period of Song and Yuan ,had appeared, and stone engravingfunction and value in collation was mentioned. The collations ,accordingto context, sentence type without exception, compared with other books,was correct usually. Wang's main method is collation from reasonincluding the following methods that accord to the tendency of the article,grammar , purpose of the article , logic and reason , genres , styles oflanguage, and so on. In the critical interpretation of an ancient text,Wang ,taking reasons, the meaning against willing , grammar ,etc. asguidelines and measuring means of critical interpretation of an ancienttext, paid attention to the linguistic context and the connection betweensemantics and sound , and made use of dialects and folk adages tointerprate, and realized differences between words and characters, andgot deeply to a concrete meaning to differentiate synonyms, and paid hisattention to the unity of the style and the genre of language, and so on.In the grammar, his connotation of the term of grammar is very close tothe modern grammar.What's more , the clearer grammar idea was establishedto analyse forefathers' spoken and written languages. Chapter three,includes Wang Ruo's limitations and lacks of linguistics and analyzes hisfaults in the collation , critical interpretation of an ancient text andgrammar. Chapter four,conclusion, sums up Wang's gain and loss oflinguistics in an all-round way, and the impact on later age.In a word, Wang Ruoxu had earthy learning attitudes,the advancedacademic views, and the comparatively scientific methods, which exerteda good influence on later age and revealed the clue of renaissance ofcritical interpretation of ancient texts.