| Legal documents of the Qin Dynasty span both before and after the unification of Qin,and are important materials for studying the use of words in Qin literature.The Qin legal documents used in this article include the Qingchuan wooden tablets,the Shuihudi Qin bamboo slips,the Liye Qin bamboo slips,the Yuelu Qin bamboo slips,and the Longgang Qin bamboo slips,covering seven categories of laws,regulations,legal interpretations,case collections,scattered cases,judicial files,and judicial documents.Official admonitions and training documents are not strictly related to legislation,judiciary,or the establishment of laws,and are not included in the scope of this article.The use of words in legal documents has certain closed characteristics and is more regulated,while also incorporating various types of word meanings that are compatible with social language,reflecting the general profile of words used in Qin literature,and can be compared with the word usage in the literature of the six kingdoms,bronze inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou dynasties,and Han Dynasty literature of the same period.In the Qin legal documents,the use of different forms for the same word is mainly based on sound borrowing,with fewer variations in written forms.In addition to being affected by the internal mechanism of the writing system,the frequency of use and functional division also clearly adhere to the "uniform script" policy of the Qin dynasty.This article exhaustively categorizes the phenomenon of multiple forms for the same word involved in the materials,sorting out 145 words in alphabetical order and conducting frequency statistics.The frequency statistics are divided by the first year of Emperor Qin Shihuang,and the materials are classified into three major sections and eight small units based on each era,providing an intuitive display of the changes in the use of words in the Qin Dynasty,especially the impact of the "uniform script" policy on word usage.On this basis,the article clarifies the relationships between words in the Qin legal documents,the relationships between words and characters,summarizes the habits of word usage,explains the reasons for the appearance of multiple forms of each word and changes in word usage,and compares and analyses the use of the words being studied in other synchronic and diachronic transmitted literature.The article also provides a corresponding diagram of the word relationship,revealing the corresponding situation of the words.Introduction: In this section,we first define related terms and introduce the legal literature content,dating information,and writing characteristics involved in the five materials.We also divide the time period of the five materials to observe the historical changes in words with multiple forms.Then,we introduce the research status of glyph and phonetic issues,as well as the relationship between terms in Qin legal literature,and summarize related research results.Finally,we introduce the academic value,research ideas,research methods,and key difficulties of our research topic.The main text is divided into three chapters,with the first two being case studies.We arrange145 words with multiple forms in alphabetical order.Under each word,we first present a frequency table divided by material type and time period,intuitively presenting the commonly used glyph and its changes.We then analyze the glyph structure and original meaning of each word,thereby judging the relationship between the various glyphs and the word,and the relationship between the various glyphs and the original glyph.Furthermore,we sort out the usage of each glyph in Qin legal literature,as well as the relevant examples in available and unearthed literature.Additionally,we analyze the reasons for the appearance of one word with multiple forms,including the policy of "uniform script" and the handwriting of the Qin dynasty.Finally,we summarize the relationship between the words and the term,including original use,borrowed use,and corrupted use,and attach a chart of the corresponding relationship between words and terms.Chapter Three is a comprehensive analysis consisting of three sections.The first section analyzes the types and causes of one world with several forms in Qin legal literature,based on case studies presented in the previous two chapters.Four types of one world with several forms in word usage are identified: homonyms in the same usage context,homonyms borrowed from different contexts,borrowed homonyms,and polysemous words that arise from dual or multiple reasons.The specific features of each type and their underlying causes are discussed.The second section investigates the impact of Qin Dynasty’s "Chinese Characters Unification" policy on the use of words,where the author studies the standardization of writing practices in wood documents LYE8-461 and compares pre-and post-unification changes in word usage to assess the effectiveness of the policy indirectly,as well as to identify the words that reflect the historical context.Lastly,the third section compares the polysemous features of legal documents from Qin and Chu Dynasties.By comparing the polysemous types and word characteristics in legal documents from these two dynasties,the author finds that the nature of the linguistic diversity that caused one world with several forms is similar,but notable differences can be seen in the influence of the "Chinese Characters Unification" policy which transformed certain aspects of word usage during the Qin Dynasty.Moreover,relative to Chu documents,Qin documents have a simpler word structure,averaging 2.1 forms per word.However,on the occasions when a word does have multiple forms in Qin documents,it is possible that this number surpasses that found in Chu documents.Finally,to facilitate search and reference,the author includes a "Stroke Check Table" and a "Phonetic Check Table" in the appendix. |
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