Scholarly Chronicle

Author: Liu Youxin / Country:
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-03-01
Features: As the 20th century is about to end and the 21st is about to begin, all work requires some reflection on the past and some planning or expectations for the next century. In the study of Chinese word origins, this should also be the case. From the perspective of the entire field of Chinese research, the study of Chinese word origins is relatively backward. If we rank them, Chinese phonology is leading the way, achieving phased development, and producing several masters who have published works worthy of being passed down through generations. Next is Chinese grammar. Since the publication of The Writings of Ma Huan in the late 19th century, nearly a century of debates on grammatical issues have arisen, introducing foreign grammatical theories and applying them to the study of Chinese grammar, but so far, no satisfactory results have been achieved. Third is the study of Chinese characters. A hundred years ago, after the discovery of oracle bone script, paleography became a prominent field of study, greatly transforming the study of textual research. However, how to explore the history of Chinese character development and how to scientifically evaluate Chinese characters is still a topic of discussion. Fourth is the study of Chinese lexicalology, which is a weak link. The Left Zuo Lexical Study is about to be published. As a reader, I read the preliminary proofread version. The author asked me to write the preface, and it was a good opportunity to express my thoughts after reading it. These thoughts, from the perspective of the entire field of linguistic research, the lexical research of the 20th century is relatively weak. Everyone can roughly calculate it: in phonology, there are masters like Zhao Yuanren, Luo Changpei, and Li Fanggui; in paleography, there are several masters led by Wang Guowei; in grammar research, after Ma Jianzhong, there are Li Jinxi, Lü Shuxiang, Wang Li, and Zhu Dexi, and there is a considerable research team. However, in lexical research, it is relatively backward. Wang Li edited a Draft of the History of Chinese Language, and the lexical history was only a small, thin volume. Later, Professor Xiang Xing’s Concise History of Chinese Language somewhat made up for this shortcoming. Wang Li also compiled a Dictionary of Homonymous Roots, which also falls within the scope of lexical studies and is a monograph on the study of Chinese lexical groups. In addition, Luo Changpei published the book Language and Culture in 1950, examining some loanwords and words from related languages in Chinese vocabulary, opening up a new approach to studying Chinese vocabulary from a cultural perspective. In the 1960s, Professor Ding Shengshu led the compilation of The Modern Chinese Dictionary, which is a modern Chinese lexical dictionary. Of course, there are many scholars’ works in this field, but overall, there is still much work that no one has done, and to this day, we are still unable to write a high-level history of Chinese vocabulary. The two large dictionaries and large character books published in the 1990s also need to be heavily revised. I believe that the study of Chinese vocabulary is a major project. Chinese has such a long history; the characters used to record Chinese are unique in the world’s writing systems; and the vocabulary recorded in the classical texts of the past dynasties recorded in Chinese characters is so complex. Therefore, studying vocabulary must be divided into several micro-analytical topics from different angles, and then all the results must be combined to compile a summary of the history of Chinese vocabulary or a large Chinese dictionary of this kind. In the study of specific topics, selecting some important classics for exhaustive lexical analysis is an important topic. Comrade Mao Yuanming’s posthumous works are an innovation in this type of research. Of course, books like Dictionary of and Index of also have certain practical values, but they are different from "research." Therefore, I think this work is pioneering. These are my thoughts.
The Historical Background of the Formation of Chinese Homonymous Compound Words
Chinese has a special type of compound word where the two morphemes have similar or related sounds and meanings, and are homonymous words with a familial relationship. For example: Shuowen states, "Xing means to rise." The character "Xing" in oracle bone script is written as , , etc., resembling four or two hands holding a plate shape, with the original meaning of lifting, and generally referring to rising or emerging. In the literature of the Spring and Autumn period, the meaning of "rising" was mostly expressed by "Xing," rarely by "Qi," such as in the Book of Songs, where "Xing" appeared 18 times and "Qi" only 2 times; in the Analects, "Xing" appeared 9 times and "Qi" only 1 time, and it did not express standing up or rising. After the Warring States period, the character "Qi" became more common. In Xunzi, "Xing" appeared 13 times and "Qi" 49 times; in Han Feizi, "Xing" appeared 8 times and "Qi" 59 times. The later "Qi" likely evolved from "Xing" through phonetic transformation. "Xing" and "Qi" are homonymous in the Xiang and Jing phonetic series, with a conversion between the Sheng and Zheng tones. The source word "Xing" and the derived word "Qi" combined to form the compound word "Xingqi." This paper refers to such compound words composed of homonymous words as homonymous compound words. Examining the rise and fall of Chinese homonymous compound words, we find that the Warring States to Eastern Han period was a period of rapid formation of homonymous compound words. From the nearly 500 homonymous compound words collected, about half can be found in literature before the Han dynasty (including the Han dynasty) and had high usage frequency. After the Eastern Han dynasty, the number of newly formed homonymous compound words decreased, and their usage frequency was also lower. Why did homonymous compound words form so rapidly during the Warring States to Eastern Han period? In addition to being driven by the trend of lexical binyunization, it mainly depends on the following three factors:
1. The existence of a large number of homonymous words. Most homonymous words in Chinese with related origins or the same origin had already emerged in ancient times, providing ample material for the formation of homonymous compound words.
2. The dominant position of synonymous collocation in binyun combinations. In the initial stage of lexical binyunization, parallel and modifier structures were the two most productive grammatical word-formation methods. In the Warring States period, the development speed of parallel structures was significantly faster than that of modifier structures, gaining an advantage; by the Eastern Han dynasty, parallel binyun words surged, accounting for about 60% of the total number of binyun words. From the semantic relationship between the two elements in parallel structures, it is mainly of three types: synonymous, sub-synonymous, and antonymous. Statistics show that in the pre-Qin period, synonymous collocation accounted for more than 50% of parallel structures, sub-synonymous collocation was less than 40%, and antonymous collocation was less than 10%. Synonymous collocation has a clear quantitative advantage. Parallel structures are strong word-formation methods in ancient Chinese, and synonymous relationships are the dominant semantic aggregation in parallel structures. Therefore, it can be inferred that synonymous collocation is a dominant combination in ancient Chinese binyunization.
3. Homonymous words, due to their similar or related meanings, are more in line with this strong combination model and are therefore more likely to enter this dominant combination model.
My dear wife, Zhang Manxia, left me on May 26 last year, and it has been nine months now. Married for 72 years, my old wife suddenly passed away, which was a spiritual earthquake for me. At the age of 90, we had already prepared for death and were content to live to this age, but for the survivor, it was still a huge shock. In the past one or two months, my mood gradually calmed down, and my life returned to its old habits. Habits are hard to break, and I once again immersed myself in reading, writing, and thinking. But my wife’s shadow often lingered beside me. Sitting in the cold for too long in winter, I felt her pressing my chest, only to realize it was my daughter when I turned around. My heart ached, and I had to put down my pen, my thoughts drifting back to the past. In the past two months, I often wanted to write some trivial stories about my wife. Last year, many of my fellow scholars suggested celebrating my birthday for me, but my refusal was ineffective, so the Chinese Department and the Institute of Literature and Documents included it in this year’s schedule. I plan to compile several articles on the process and methods of studying linguistics and textual research into a collection to share with the friends attending the conference. I also want to write about my late wife’s contributions to my academic pursuits, partly as a tribute to her and partly to acknowledge my achievements, which also include her contributions. These short essays are not intended to fully record her life or our 72 years of marriage, but only to write about some of our struggles in adversity and the past two decades.
After I was labeled a "rightist" in 1958, the biggest impact on her was the change in our economic status. At that time, I was a professor at the fourth level of higher education with a salary of 196 yuan. She had no job, and the three children were studying. We hired someone to help with household chores and also supported our parents’ living expenses, as the prices were very low at the time, and there was no need to worry about it. After being wrongfully labeled, my salary was canceled, and I was given 18 yuan in living expenses per month, and I was sent to a nearby rural area for "supervision and labor." All the burdens of the family of four suddenly fell on her shoulders. When I left, my feelings were very complex, worried about her, worried that as a housewife, she couldn’t bear this burden. Yet, she showed a miracle-like strength. She didn’t cry or lament but solemnly took my hand and encouraged me: "You go to the countryside to work, take good care of your health, and strive to remove the 'hat' as soon as possible. There’s nothing to worry about at home, I’ll take care of everything!" Hearing this, I felt slightly relieved, but I still didn’t believe she could single-handedly carry such a heavy burden. Later, I found that she truly did. At that time, there was a family association at the school, and under it was a sewing group. Any economically disadvantaged family women with some sewing skills could join. She joined, sewing and mending every day, earning a few cents. At that time, many people wore handmade shoes, and the most labor-intensive task was sewing the soles. Small pieces of cloth were layered, glued with paste, flattened, pressed flat, dried, and then stitched with coarse hemp thread into hard, flat, and aesthetically pleasing soles. Because the soles were made of many layers of coarse cloth, a lot of force was needed to pierce them with a needle. Some people used a steel awl to pierce a hole first, then inserted the needle, but such soles were not firm and durable. She didn’t do that. When sewing, she always wore a thimble on her right middle finger, relying entirely on manual strength. When the needle hit the sole, she had to pull the hemp thread tight, so the soles she sewed were widely recognized. Some people specifically asked her to sew soles for them. If she couldn’t finish during the day, she would take them home to work at night. In the summer, with many mosquitoes, she would sew in her mosquito net, sweating profusely until dawn. Sewing one sole earned five cents, and she earned about ten yuan a month this way. Starting from 1959, the three years of "natural disasters" took too much hard work and finally exhausted her body. One time I took leave to go home, she suddenly vomited a large amount of blood, half a basin of dark, reddish blood, and she was barely alive, which terrified me. However, I was helpless. Taking her to the hospital was out of the question, as we had no money. After taking two doses of traditional Chinese medicine, the bleeding stopped, and her condition stabilized temporarily. Fortunately, her physical condition was strong, and she stood up again. However, her body was severely weakened, and she often felt hungry. One day, she couldn’t bear it anymore, and coincidentally, she had four two-yuan rice coupons. I went to the street and bought her two small bowls of noodles. She ate the entire large bowl in one gulp. While I was drooling with hunger, I was worried that she might get sick from eating too much, but nothing happened. From then on, she recovered. Despite always feeling hungry, she never accepted others’ kind offers of help. Once, in front of a small food stall, I met an old colleague I knew well, who sincerely invited her to have a bowl of noodles. She stubbornly refused, and they argued for a long time. There were several such incidents. In those years, being invited for a bowl of noodles by a friend was infinitely more precious than being invited to a banquet costing hundreds or thousands of yuan today. However, she would rather endure hunger than accept this kindness. Later, she told me this, and while my heart ached, even I felt her extreme stubbornness.