A Study On Semantic Classification Of Nouns In The Novel "Yueweicaotang Notes"

The previous researches on the “YueWeiCaoTang Notes” are mainly from theperspective of literary biography, ideology, culture, literature; and seldom from theperspective of linguistics, especially with the methods of statistics and classificationof nouns. From the perspective of word, this article focuses on the nouns of“YueWeiCaoTang Notes”, combining with the use of computer software and therusults of manual correction word segmentation, with the methods of quantitative andqualitative analysis, the static description and inductive analysis. Consulting theclassification standard of various sects words and nouns, the segmentation of nouns inthis article will maily carry out by semantics and grammatical segmentation will besupplementary. Standard of word segmentation will be made according to thelanguage feature of “YueWeiCaoTang Notes” with the purpose of setting up the “YueWeiCaoTang Notes” words and noun corpus, and making statistics of word frequency.The key point of this study is focusing on the semantic classification of noun corpus,and on this basis to explore the social conditon of mid Qing Dynasty。From the results of the statistics of word frequency，It is known that doublesyllables predominate in vocabulary entry, and single syllable coverage is relativelylarge in the word frequency. This conforms to the rule of transition from theProto-Mandarin Chinese to contemporary Chinese, i.e. the change from singlesyllable words to multi syllable words. Moreover, According to the classificationcriteria of the noun semantic making by famous scholars, basing on the "905engineering semantic classification system" by Mr. Zhan Weidong, a static semanticsystem of “YueWeiCaoTang Notes” is established. The noun is divided into twocategories: proper nouns and common nouns, with subdivision of145small classes.Among them, the proper nouns are divided into four classes: names of people, namesof places, names of countries names of and reign titles; the common nouns are dividedinto five classes: abstract, material, affair, time and space, with the total of141small classes. Then analysis and induction are made for most categories. From the analysis,It is known that these145classes basiscally cover all kinds of nouns in“YueWeiCaoTang Notes”. The large semantic categories of “YueWeiCaoTang Notes”provide us the most direct corpus for understanding the social situation in mid QingDynasty. In the end, combining with the era background of mid Qing Dynasty,applying related linguistics theories, description of noun semantic category of“YueWeiCaoTang Notes” and summary of the social situation reflected in“YueWeiCaoTang Notes” are made.