Yang Xiong's Dialectical Explanations and Collated Evidence -(Full 2 Volumes)

Author: Hu Xuecheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: On a macro scale, dialects hold an important position in the history of linguistics in China. Specifically, the following points can be summarized: , it highlights the changes of language over time and the geographical shifts of dialects. Second, it proposed the zoning issue of Chinese dialects at that time. Third, it introduced the concept of (translingualism). Fourth, it adopted oral surveys in collecting dialectal vocabulary. All of these were pioneering achievements in the world at that time. In ancient Greece, scholars noticed the linguistic differences among the four dialects of ancient Greece; ancient Indian scholar Varahamihira wrote the Prakriti Granth, describing the grammatical phenomena of Indian dialects at that time, but they rarely addressed the differences in dialectal vocabulary. In this sense, Yang Xiong's Dialects stood out among contemporary works. If we turn our attention to medieval Arabia, the significance of dialects becomes even more pronounced. Medieval Arabia was renowned for its lexicography, compiling dictionaries for various tribal languages, but they rarely elaborated on the historical evolution and geographical distribution of words. In contrast, Yang Xiong's Dialects, centuries earlier, successfully addressed this very issue.