A Collection of Essays on the History of the Chinese Language (Supplemented Edition)

Author: Guo Xiliang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-11-21
Features: The articles included in this collection are my papers on the history of the Chinese language. Except for one written in the 1950s, the rest were written in the past decade. The articles are organized into four categories—grammar, phonology, etymology and vocabulary, and literary language—roughly according to their content, and then arranged in chronological order of publication. I began my graduate studies at Peking University in 1954, under the guidance of Professor Yi Le, and started my research on the history of the Chinese language. Due to my strong interest in classical literature and literary theory during my undergraduate years, I remained reluctant to abandon literature after entering graduate school. Thus, I set myself the goal of studying the history of literary language, believing that this would allow me to combine literature and language. The article included in this collection, "Han Yu's Theories and Practices in Literary Language," was my thesis for that academic year. Professor Yi Le highly praised this thesis, greatly encouraging me. However, upon graduation, I encountered the "academic criticism" of 1958, which promoted collective book compilation, and my thesis was canceled. I had no choice but to store the materials I had collected for writing the thesis in a box. In the 1960s, while working with Professor Yi Le on the compilation of Classical Chinese, I had the opportunity to use some of the materials to write two sections titled "The Structure of Parallel Prose." I also took charge of the general introductions to other sections on literary styles, which was closely related to my earlier interest in the history of literary language. I studied under Professor Yi Le for 32 years, benefiting greatly from his teachings. Under his influence, I came to understand the importance of broad and comprehensive scholarship, and during my graduate studies, I developed an interest in the history of grammar and phonology. Especially after joining the faculty, teaching duties prevented me from continuing my research on literary language history, and my main focus shifted to the history of Chinese grammar, while also delving into writing, phonology, and etymology. The Cultural Revolution forced me to interrupt my academic research. After the "restoration of order," while shouldering a heavy teaching load, I wrote dozens of articles over the past decade, in response to invitations from various journals and collections. These articles covered not only various fields of the history of the Chinese language but also topics such as writing, dialects, and the teaching of ancient Chinese. Some of these articles have been cited by scholars both at home and abroad, or requested by young colleagues for reference. Now, I have selected some of them to be published in a collection, partly for the convenience of readers in searching, and partly to seek broader feedback from experts at home and abroad. The articles included in this collection mostly focus on grammar. Some explore the development of certain grammatical phenomena, emphasizing the excavation of linguistic facts, such as "The Origin and Development of Third-Person Pronouns" and "The Development of Word Formation in Ancient Chinese." Others offer a fresh perspective on certain grammatical phenomena from a systemic viewpoint, emphasizing both a comprehensive examination of linguistic phenomena and the exploration of issues from new angles, such as "On the System of Demonstrative Pronouns in Ancient Chinese" and "New Explorations in the Pragmatics of Ancient Chinese." Some focus on the exploration of research methods, such as "Some Reflections on the Debate over the Origin and Development of the Copula 'shi'" and "Preliminary Thoughts on the Study of Ancient Chinese Grammar." In phonology, the main focus is on the phonological system of the Book of Songs, using the theory of distributional complementarity and the internal reconstruction method of phonological projection to explore the phonological systems of the Shang Dynasty and the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, contributing to the filling of gaps in ancient phonology research. In etymology, I proposed the argument that antonymic etymologies are unreliable, which sparked heated debate. The common thread running through all the articles is that research in all fields of the history of the Chinese language must inherit the rigorous academic traditions and achievements of traditional Chinese linguistics while also absorbing the theories and methods of modern Western linguistics. Pragmatism is required, but innovation is even more important. Special attention should be paid to the systematicity and diachronic variability of language, avoiding isolated observations and judging the past by modern standards. Overall, most of these articles discuss various aspects of pre-Qin Chinese, as I believe that understanding the origins is crucial for researching the history of the Chinese language. I once envisioned continuing research on certain issues in the history of the Chinese language from the pre-Qin period onward, but unfortunately, many of these plans and research projects were unrealized due to various reasons. If conditions permit in the future, I will still strive to realize some of my original ideas. While I do not dare to be hasty in my writing, most of my articles were written in response to invitations, which were often time-limited, so some of them may inevitably bear the marks of being hastily completed. For this collection, in addition to standardizing the format and correcting typographical errors, I have changed the titles of two articles and made minor revisions to the wording of a few others. As for the arguments, they remain unchanged. This is not out of self-assurance but because time and energy do not allow me to re-examine my original research in depth.