Research Of Nomination Words On Apparatus In LiJi

The research on nomination is an important part of traditional Chinese exegetics. The nomination word is a word associated with a specific and certain material. The identities of a nomination word, i.e, how and why the nomination word was used, have deep relations with their etymological meanings. LiJi(《禮記》),or Xiao Dai LiJi(《小戴禮記》),is an acient book with forty-nine chapters, which mainly records the etiquette before Qin-Han dynasties and focuses on Zhou dynasty. The etiquette includes:Dianzhang, Nominations, and Systems; Guan, Hun, Sang, Ji, Yan, Xiang, Chao, and Pin for every hierarchy after the emperor; and etiquette on family and social relations. The book, with a wide range of contents, is an important ancient book to study the society and Confucianism of pre-Qin period. Furthermore, there are abundant nomination words in LiJi (《禮記》)In this thesis, the author chose the nomination words on apparatus in LiJi(《禮記》),classified and statistically analyzed them, then selected some of them to trace and discuss their etymological meanings as well as meaning evolution based on digesting of many previous studies, and finally, tried to elucidate the rules and characteristics of nomination-reality association for such words.The thesis studied the etymological meanings of nomination words on apparatus in LiJi(《禮記》),based on the theoretical foundation of relative motivation of nomination and the step stage theory of occurrence and accumulating of Chinese words. In this thesis, several verification and re-explanations methods were used, mainly including:(1) identification of cognates and tracing the etymological meaning; (2) relation and comparison of the cognates; (3) analysis of the relations of lexical meanings; (4) referring to dialects and language relatives; (4) crossed verification by excavated texts. At the same time, we also took on the method of exploring meaning through pronunciation in the Qing dynasty and adopted the rule of comparison and mutual proof verification from Mr. Lu Zong-Da and Mr. Wang Ning, and the sememe analysis proposed by Mr. Wang Ning, based on Chinese reality and western semantics researches. The outline and framework of the thesis are similar to the book Nomination words research in Zhou Li(《<周禮>名物詞研究》)by Mr. Liu Xing-Jun.The thesis is mainly composed by the following 6 parts.Introduction mainly introduces the purpose and task of the research, the history and current status of researches on relevant topic, and the theory foundations and methods adopted in the thesis.Chapter 1 introduces a historic review of LiJi(《禮記》),and its different versions of interpretation. This chapter concisely traces the timing of Li Ji(《禮記》)as being a complete book as in the present form, and different interpretations of LiJi(《禮記》)Chapter 2 presents the classification and selection of nomination words on apparatus in LiJi(《禮記》). In this chapter, the nomination and nomination words are defined, primarily according to the idea of Prof. Xing-Jun Liu and other modern researchers. Then the nomination words were selected based on the defining. Accordingly, a total of 389 nomination words in 13 categories were selected, and they were descripted for every category.Chapter 3 presents the research of etymological meanings of nomination words on apparatus in LiJi (《禮記》)This chapter is the body of the thesis, mainly includes: 1, Outline. By tracing the origin and evolution of nomination words, this chapter discusses the relations of phonetic and semantic, traces the changes in nomination and meaning, then summarizes the rule of occurrence and accumulation of Chinese words. 2, The etymological meanings of monosyllable nomination words on apparatus in LiJi(《禮記》)A total of 246 such words were found in LiJi(《禮記》)Twenty-four monosyllables of such words in 15 groups were selected to trace their etymological meanings by the method of comparing the cognates, based on previous studies and in perspectives of phonetic as a thread and the usefulness to trace the origin from phonetic component of Chinese character.3, The etymological meanings of disyllable nomination words on apparatus in LiJi(《禮記》)Nine such words in 6 groups were selected to trace and interpret their etymological meanings. To achieve this aim, the efforts were taken on elucidating the origin of every morpheme in the word. At the same time, we also referred and digested of modern researches in archeology, palaeography and classic documentation, for verification and interpretation.Chapter 4:The analyses of characteristics and rules of name-reality associations for nomination words on apparatus in LiJi(《禮記》)Based on the analyses of the etymological meanings for monosyllable and disyllable nomination words, this chapter summarizes the rule of name-reality association, and elucidates the features of phonetic and semetic for the nomination words. Firstly, the phonetic component of Chinese character is useful for elucidating the etymological meanings, and most monosyllable words can use this feature to trace and interpret the nomination words. The specific conditions are summarized as follows:1, the literal meaning of phonetic component has bearing on the etymological meaning for the word.2, the extended meaning (derived sense) of phonetic component has bearing on the etymological meaning for the word.3, the phonetic component morphology itself does not bearing on the etymological meanings for the word, but the pronunciation does.4, one phonetic component has two or more not related meanings.5, different phonetic component have the same etymological meaning of one word. Secondly, polysyllable words are associated with certain word-constructing rules, and they have strong coupled meaning features. The meaning of the word may include some meanings of their sememes, which are probably the etymological meaning of the word. Most of the polysyllable words are actually compound words. The different nominations are found for one certain apparatus.Postscript. This part summarizes the thesis, and point out the innovations and deficiencies of the thesis, as well as the possible direction for further study.