Dictionary "interpretation Methods Of Research

The first dictionary of China ,Shuo Wen Jie Zi(Shuo Wen for short in the followingpassage),was edited by the famous scholar of characters,Xu Shen of the East Han Dynasty,whospent twenty-one years on it.It takes the lead in the following aspects as collecting newcharacters and items,coining new parts of words,and defining six patterns of characters.It ishighly praised and very valuable in the history of linguistic graphology.It has a strong influenceon the coming generations.Since its birth, Shuo Wen has attracted many scholars to do research on it, thus formed aninfluential Shuo Wen School.For years,scholars throughout history have done research on ShuoWen and made great achievements.But seldom researches tried the aspect of its explanatorymethods.Many works of etymology and some works on Shuo Wen just referred to it in somechapter of the whole book,and only with general explanation instead of detailedremarks.Special articles on this issue are scattered instead of comprehensive.Thus, employingtheories of modern semantics and on the basis of the researches done by former scholars,thisthesis tries to make a systematic and detailed study on the explanatory methods of Shuo Wen.The thesis involves three parts.The first part is prelude, including theintroduction of the author Xu Shen and his works Shuo Wen ,and the definitionof explanatory methods based on explanation.It also expounds the method andsignificance of the research.The second part is the body of the thesis,whichelaborates the explanatory methods of Shuo Wen concerning one syllable words andtwo syllable words.Since Shuo Wen is a book about characters,it mainly explainsone syllable words.It applied sixteen methods to explanation of one syllable words,namely, synonymous explanation, definition, image description, metaphor,antonymous explanation, addition of the conventional context in which the wordis used, root retrieval, example, classification, further explanation of relatedwords, referent replacement, further explanation of related information,euphemism, implicit explanation by offering related information, emptyexplanation for seldom used words, comprehensive methods. For two syllablewords,it mainly discusses two words repetition and two-alliterated words.Thethesis firstly offers explicit definitions for each of the explanatorymethods.According to this,it makes general classification of the explanatoryexamples of Shuo Wen;and then it makes specific classification according to theforms of explanatory examples in Shuo Wen,that is, whether there are marked termsin explanatory words. It focuses on the semantic relations between the explainedwords and explanatory words when doing detailed analysis on each specificexplanatory example.It makes deep research to fully display the general view ofthe explanatory methods of Shuo Wen.The third part is concluding remarks.It makesconclusions on the characteristics of explanatory methods,explanatoryterms,explanatory principles and so on.It also makes clear the significance ofthe explanatory methods of Shuo Wen according to its comparisons with Er Ya andModern Chinese Dictionary.In a word,the explanatory methods of Shuo Wen is very characterized,it follows Er Ya andinfluences Modern Chinese Dictionary and other subsequent dictionaries.The overall review ofthe explanatory methods of Shuo Wen can make its following explanation more inclusive andexact, and enable the explanatory methods more complete and scientific. It can strengthen thecompilation and research work of dictionaries.