The Interpretation Of YanShigu's Study On Language And Characters From KuangmiuZhengsu

In the history of Chinese linguistics, it is generally believed that the scientific researching methods of language and characters were put forward and consciously applied first at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and reached their summit in the Qing Dynasty. But many relatively mature ideas and methods that have been owed to the later scholars have been reflected in KuangmiuZhengsu, written by YanShigu in the early years of the Tang Dynasty. Although the main intention of this book was to correct the mistakes in ancient books made by predecessors, Yan did not restrict himself in the interpretation of language and characters' facts, or rather, made contributions to the researching methods and theoretical perspectives. His meticulous scholarship and researching methods have exerted tremendous influence on later linguists in many ways, but he failed to refine them theoretically and raise them to a higher level. He just applied them consciously or unconsciously. Till to now, papers reviewing KuangmiuZhengsu at a methodological angle are rare. Thus, it is very, necessary and useful to analyze his achievements and deficiencies by evaluating KuangmiuZhengsu in the view of methodology .The first chapter of the thesis makes a brief introduction on YanShigu's life and the book KuangmiuZhengsu. Then it goes into three parts: The second chapter gives more details about the content of the book. Yan's most important parts of work are: examining and correcting the meaning and pronunciation of the words in ancient books which had been misinterpreted, analyzing the form and structure of characters, discerning function words and phonetic loan characters, and etymologizing the words in dialects of the Tang Dynasty. The third chapter elaborates the researching methods and theoretical Yan's ideas. Among them, the distinguishing features of KuangmiuZhengsu are the application of the semantic relations of words to determine their pronunciation in ancient verses, mutual clarifying between visual and audial forms or between forms and meanings, connecting and assorting the rhyming words,emphasizing the evidence from ancient documents and contemporary dialects. The forth chapter examines the deficiencies of YanShigu's study. The paper shows that there are some misinterpretations made by YanShigu in phonetic loan characters and the definition of disyllabic roots, and his preferring towards conservatism also results in some mistakes in the explaining of some words.