Lexical Studies On YouYangZaZu

YouYangZaZu is a literary piece, written by Duan Chengshi in Tang Dynasty. Much importance is universally attached to it because of its variety in content although it consists of no morn than twenty thousands words. Given that content is non-detachable from language, this book is exclusively special in language. This thesis just focuses on the embryo study of its language with regard to lexical aspect. The first chapter of the thesis introduces ZaZu's creating process, the reason for deserving the name, handing down of the edition and the present situation of researching it. The second and the third chapter illustrate ZaZu's two lexical characteristics respectively. First, its vocabulary is abundant, which is best reflected by all kinds of specialterminology, proper noun, loanwords and synonym. This is mainly decided by the wide content in ZaZu. Second, the vocabulary is no doubt updating, which is fully expressed by many new words, new meanings and colloquial words in Tang Dynasty as well. The thesis deals with some of the new words and new meanings which haven't been explained in several present dictionaries, traces back to the origin of some words and reveals their value in the history of Chinese. With respect to colloquial words, I closely associate the present study with ZaZu in order to overcome a great deal of hindrance in reading. Much illustration of proper nouns in ZaZu is important to explain words in dictionaries. In the fourth chapter, the function is emphatically analyzed. Meanwhile, some words explained in ZaZu are cited. The fifth chapter of this thesis mainly demonstrates some intricate words, which are composed of loanwords, colloquial words, words which are unintelligible to understand because of the error of collation and punctuation as well as some words explained by some dictionaries or scholars in a wrong way. Moreover, I have attached to the last part of the thesis my collation achievement in the process of research.