Research On The Language Of Texts Of Dunhuang Shuyi

Dunhuang Manuscripts is the most important research material on the modern Chinese language, but it was only the Bianwen(变文) and the poems written by WangFanzhi which have quite a few colloquial elements that have aroused concern among the academic circles, and the others has not been put enough emphasis on, such as the documents of shuyi. Shuyi is a popular form of ceremony and also a model on etiquette and letter style. Shuyi noted in the historical records before Five Dynasties, most of them had been lost. Coincidentally, more than 100 pieces of shuyi texts were preserved in the sealed cave which was discovered in 1900, most of them were mot memorized in those literature handed down from ancient times. Texts of Dunhuang shuyi have precious value on the research of the letter wording, because in the history of the development of letter they continued from Han, Wei and Six Dynasties and followed by Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing, the vocabulary in them carried on the traditions of letter in Wei and Jin Dynasties and brought about a new standard of letter in Song and Yuan Dynasties.This dissertation makes a comprehensive study on the language of texts of Dunhuang shuyi for the first time. After clarifying the connotation of shuyi and fixing the object of study, the paper elaborates the general state of extant shuyi texts and their research situation through classification, and raises the methods of research on the basis of the language characteristic of shuyi. From the standpoint of the nature of language material of shuyi, it is proved by lots of concrete examples that study on the language of shuyi is very valuable to refer to sorting out ancient books and editing dictionary. Then a whole knowledge of the language features of the texts of Dunhuang shuyi has been taken shape through discussing the appearance of handwritten copy and the essence of shuyi from the surface to the center. Based on this, the paper explores a lot of burgeoning words and meanings in the texts of Dunhuang shuyi, lays stress on tracing the origin of them while describing their general condition. Finally, all kinds of synonyms have been extracted from the regular form of letter, and the author selects several typical groups of them to make microscopic observation and finds out that there are plentiful synonyms in the texts of Dunhuang shuyi, on the other hand, each word shows the firm distiction of "the grade " when it is used in the letter.