"Yang Xiong's "Collected Explanations and Verifications of the 'Fangyan'" (Vol. 1 and 2)

Author: Hu Xuecheng Hui Zhen, Wang Zhiqun, Xie Rong'e, Wang Caiqin (Associate Editors)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: Not Available
Features: Macroscopically speaking, dialects hold an important position in the history of Chinese linguistics. Specifically, the following points can be summarized: First, it highlights the temporal changes and spatial shifts of language. Second, it proposes the regional division of Chinese dialects at that time. Third, it introduces the concept of (translingualism). Fourth, it adopts oral investigation methods for collecting dialectal vocabulary. In all these aspects, it was also leading in the world at that time. In ancient Greece, scholars noticed the linguistic divergences of the four dialects of ancient Greece; ancient Indian scholars, such as Varahamihira, wrote Prakriti Grantham 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 was unparalleled among contemporary works. If we turn our attention to medieval Arabia, the significance of dialects becomes even more prominent. 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 successfully addressed this issue centuries ago.