Huang Linguistic Study

Huang Sheng , a scholar who lives between Ming and Qing Dynasties, is proficient in textual criticism, pronunciation and six kinds of methods of creating Chinese characters. He also makes great achievements in exege-tics. He is a early scholar of sincere and honest shool of Hui Zhou with Jiang Yong and Wang Fu.The linguistic theory contained in the rich materials of his two linguistic works Zi Gu and Yi Fu. Mr. He Jiuying takes Huang Sheng as delegate with Gu Yanwu and Mao Qingling during the initial era of Qing Dynasty' s linguistics in his work the History of Chiniese linguistics . Qing Dynasty is a phase in which there has been comprehensive improvement in our country' s ancient linguistics,so the study of Huang Sheng' s linguistics is very important. We study Huang Sheng' s linguistics through sorting them out and deeper summing them up.We find that Huang Sheng has a distinct idea of era, so he pays a great deal of attention to the historical changes of Chinese elements and has deep cognition and research for the historical evolution of Chinese characters , pronunciation and the meaning of a word. He applies the method of seeking its meaning according to its pronunciation to explain the vocal switch, the phonetic loan characters and the unbroken words, while exploring the etymology. All these affect the famous Chinese exegesis interpreters such as Dai Zhen,Duan Yucai, Wang Niansun and etc. in Qing Dynasty. Huang Sheng initiates the era of appliying the method of seeking its meaning according to its pronunciation in Qing Dynasty. He makes a lot of achievements in his exegetic practice because he has great attainments of the ancient phonetics. Huang Sheng recognizes that there are no differences between light and heavy labials, which is one hundred years before Qian Daxin brings up his theory "The light labial is similar to the heavy in the ancient time. " At the same time he analyses the phenomenon of vocal switch. All these are extremely valuable in the end of Ming Dynasty when the ancient phonetics is implicit. He recognizes the systematicness of words and tries to explore the system of the meanings of a word through careful analyse and generalization. He explores the cause of popular word and explains the ancient words through the popular ones.In addition, he has many original opinions in grammar, rhetoric and correction.Huang Sheng' s linguistics is comprehensive and abundant, which is the solid foundation of the revival and development of Qing Dynasty' s linguistics. The study of Huang Sheng' s linguistics can supply some reference to the research of the history of Qing Dynasty' s linguistics,so it is necessary to explore it.