Research On The Musical Instrument Substantives In Zhouli

As one of the masterpiece among the Thirteen Confucian Classics, Zhouli, which is said to be the work of Duke of Zhou, a renowned statesman in the Western Zhou Dynasty, recorded the social system according to the classification of official position. This book has a rich content, ranging from macro issues like the whole country’s events or astronomical study to microscopic matters like the road construction or the description of flora and fauna. In specific, we could find many detailed information in this comprehensive book such as the state’s construction system, politics, culture, education, legislation, social manners, military and penalty, tax revenue policy, diet and dressing habit, religion, agriculture and business as well as handicraft and medical skill. Therefore, Zhouli can be regarded as a treasure house of ancient cultural history, especially for its merit in the recording and reservation of1548substantives, which offered great favor for scholar’s research. Furthermore, the musical instrument substantives constitute a large part of the lexicon and we could have a clear comprehension about these words.This dissertation rearranged90musical instrument substantives and did a further study about the etymology meaning of16musical instrument substantives with the hope of giving reasonable explanation for the origination of these words.This dissertation can be divided into six parts. First is the preface with the introduction of research targets, theory and methodology, the selection of vocabulary and the value of the research on the musical instrument substantives in Zhouli. The second part is the eight kinds of the musical instrument substantives and its classification principle according to the instrument materials. Next, the etymology meanings of these words are studied with the lexical classification, namely the monosyllable and the compound. The forth part is focused on the characteristics of the lexical naming process. Fifth, the semantic level among the musical instrument substantives is discussed. The research methods that had been used in this research are the method of identifying cognate word, the analytical method of etymology meanings, the analytical approach of relation of lexical meaning and induction.