A Study Of The Two-syllabled Words In Shiming

Shiming <<释名>>,which was written by Liu Xi at the end of the Han dynasty (B.C.206-A.D.220 ) and regarded as the first work of Chinese etymology,belongs to the category of critical interpretation of ancient texts in the traditional Chinese linguistics.The main idea of Shiming is to find out why something was named.Its value lies in not only semantics and phonology,but also language material.The paper thinks of Shiming itself as language material,and reanalyses it in the eyes of the two-syllabled words.On this basis,the paper classifies and induces the two-syllabled words in Shiming, and finds out the features of the two-syllabled words at the end of the Han dynasty.A general form of definition in Shiming is "a word to be explained + an annotation word + subsentence".The form has an obvious feature that a one-syllabled word to be explained or a one-syllabled annotation word becomes an element for constructing word,and makes up of a two-syllabled word with another element for constructing word.The paper stresses the feature to make a study of two-syllabled words.During reading Shiming,we have noticed some faults in two dictionaries-Hanyu Dacidian <<汉语大词典>> and Hanyu Dazidian<<汉语大词典>>.The paper has corrected some faults in them.