Yizhoushu's Language Characteristics And Its Document Study Value

Tizhoushu is a documentary compilation, therefore, the past study on the book mainly centered upon the collating, or laid particular emphasis on the meanings of word, or inquired into the documentary problems about its compilation and rearrangement, edition spread, and quotation of the past dynasties. Occasionally, it concerned about the features of literature and art. But to the characteristics of language structure itself in Tizhoushu, nobody showed any interest in it; especially the systematic description of its vocabulary, grammar, usage of rhyme and other aspects has not been touched upon even more. However, the language characteristics are the living fossils for proving the times when the ancient books were written, their value are not lower than excavating documents, the two can conform each other. Regarding a chapter as a unit ,carrying on the research of language characteristics in Yizhoushu can help us judge the corresponding creation age roughly , so this kind of research is valuable in the documentary study.The forming processes of most chapters in Yizhoushu are quite complicated. Among them, the most simple part is the historical books which takes the narrative history and imperial mandates as its heart .The majority of these chapters might be done by a person at a certain time, or be done according to the historical records about Zhou Dynasty .The book on politics, the book on military strategy and tactics, the book on propriety were completed by later generations layer by layer, there are raw materials and also contain the supplementary writings of the Spring and autumn and the Warring States ,even the interpretation of people in Han Dynasty. Consequently, lots of chapters are consisted of "scripture", "biography", and "note"; the forming of these documents is a dynamic process of development.The editing of Yizhoushu underwent the following stages: it was edited for the first time during Pre-Qin period, proofread and supplemented by Liuxiang and his son in Han Dynasty, and the further rectification and reorganization was in Jin Dynasty .In the course of circulation and development, some chapters had circulated in single pamphlet, which were augmented and interpreted by the descendants and then were compiled again in this book, some have been lost after having been separated. Jizhongzhoushu has nothing with Yizhoushu, we treat Tizhoushu as Jizhongzhoushu which is in fact a misapplication of the name.The documents in Yizhoushu represent a quite long creation procession, going through the periods of later Xizhou, the Spring and Autumn, and the Warring States, even Han Dynasty, 700-800-year span. Among them, some were finished in Xizhou Dynasty, some were written in the Spring and Autumn according to the materials which were recorded in Xizhou Dynasty, also, some were augmented once again in line with the documents of the Spring and Autumn, still, some were adapted in the light of historical facts on the later stage of the Warring States period. For this reason, documents in the book reflect general characteristics of the forming process of documents in Pre-Qin ,of the contents of books from Pre-Qin to Han Dynasty. Certainly, it has its own distinctive features: it is a collection of all sorts of books, and the content is not the statements of a school, it might be the combination of "经"(jing) "子"(zi), itmight be the compound of "zhougongchuanshu" and "taigongchuanshu". However, its main part was completed from the Spring and Autumn to the Warring States, its language characteristics display that the use of modal particle increased gradually; (an),(shu),(xi),(wu)etc. emerged in the interrogative pronoun, the expression ways of (dingzhen) rhetoric and "be listed in the order of number" were commonly used ;Most chapters rely mainly on four-word rhyme ,and have the phenomenon of mixed use of rhyme such as -(dong dong),(yu hou),(zhi zhi)(zhi zhl) etc. Some chapters are documents of Xizhou Dynasty displaying frequent use of modal particle (zai)and its function is variable ; the first pers...