Gong Qianyan: Words, words, rhymes, grammar

Excerpt from The First Section of Gong Qianyan's History of Chinese and Chinese Law, a brief introduction to the study of exegesis, philology, phonology and grammar

Grammar is an integral part of linguistics, and in order to understand the history of grammar more deeply, it is necessary to look at the individual from the system and first understand the development history of the entire linguistics.

There was no term "linguistics" in ancient China, but we cannot assume that there was no linguistics in ancient China just because there was no such term in ancient times. In fact, Chinese paid attention to the study of language issues very early, for example, Xun Yu (33 BC to 255 BC) at the end of the Warring States period talked about the role of language and the social convention of the relationship between name and reality in the "Correct Name Chapter". The scribes and writers after the Han Dynasty were more linguists, and their research results were very rich, but most of them were scattered in various books and articles, and rarely formed monographs. Therefore, if we want to study the history of Chinese dialects and the history of grammar, in addition to facing a number of special books, we must also analyze and sort out the scattered documents of the past dynasties, so as to discover many valuable eastern and eastern sources from them. This is yet to be done by our constant efforts.

If the chinese Chinese dialectics is discussed in terms of monographs, the hermeneutics occurs first, followed by philology, followed by phonology, and grammar at the latest.

In the literature of the fourth and fifth centuries BC, there are records of people interpreting language and writing in the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn Periods. For example, in "Chinese Zhou Yuxia", Shu Xiang explains that "Zhou Song Hao Tian has a destiny" "Dream night base fate is secret, Yu JiXi." "Dream night, Gongye; Ji, Shiye, Fate; Xinye; Yu, Kuanye; Mi, Ningye; Ji, Mingye; Xi, Guangye; Qiang, Houye; Wanton, Guye; Jing, and Heye." Such word interpretations abounded at the time and thereafter, which undoubtedly laid the foundation for the birth of dictionaries. In the Warring States period, the rise of nomenclature gave a preliminary understanding of the classification of things, so that words could be distinguished according to the categories of things. It can be seen from this that it is no accident that China's first monograph to explain the meaning of ancient words, "Erya", appeared at the beginning of the Han Dynasty at the end of the week. The Erya divides the various words into categories of things, and comprehensively interprets synonyms in each passage. It "interprets the past with the customs, and interprets the past with the present", because only in this way can it play a role in exhortation. Works similar to the nature of "Erya" are also Yang Xiong's "Dialects" in the late Western Han Dynasty and Liu Xi's "Interpretation of Names" in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. After "Erya", the academic qualifications have been unbroken for a long time, and various dynasties have representative works, such as Wei Zhangyi's "Guangya", Jin Guopu's "Erya Notes", Song Lutuo's "Qiya", Ming Fang Yizhi's "Tongya", qing Wang Niansun's "Guangya Shuzhi" and so on. The reason why hermeneutics first arose and endured for a long time is that in ancient times, our country always respected the scriptures and texts, and took the interpretation of its words and the exposition of its teachings as its sacred duty.

Unlike Indo-European Pinyin scripts, Chinese characters are ideographic characters, and form and meaning are closely related, so Chinese exegesis has a way of analyzing the structure of words to study the original meanings expressed by words. This method began as early as the Spring and Autumn Period. For example, in the Twelve Years of the Left Transmission and XuanGong, it is said that "Yu Wen Zhi Ge is Wu", which means that the glyph of "Wu" is from "Stop" and "Ge", indicating that only by stopping Gange can it be called "Wu". For another example, in the "FifteenTh Year of The Left Transmission and The Reign of The Emperor", it is said that "the ancient text is lacking anyway", which means that the glyph of the word "lack" is the reverse of the "正" character (文 "lacking" character written "(lack of small seals)", and those who are opposite the right should be lacking. This method of studying writing developed to the Eastern Han Dynasty, and China's first philological monograph "Explanation of Characters in Speaking Texts" appeared. The influence of the Commentary on Later Generations was extremely far-reaching, and its shadow can still be glimpsed in various lexicons today, and some of the basic principles it set have been used by dictionaries and dictionaries. More than 80% of the Chinese characters in the Shuowen Jiezi are shaped and sound characters, so it can see both meaning and pronunciation from the glyphs, so that philology occupies the first place in the study of ancient Chinese. It is no accident that philology became a Chinese xianxue immediately after the study of exegesis. After the "Commentary on the Interpretation of Characters", various dynasties also had representative works of philology, such as Jin Lüchen's "Zilin", Liang Guyewang's "Jade Chapter" of the Southern Dynasty, Tang YanShigu's "Kuang False And Orthodox Customs", Song Wangsu's "Class Chapter", Liao Monk Xingjun's "Dragon Niche Handbook", and Ming Mei's "Zihui" and so on. The Qing Dynasty was even more prosperous, with more than 100 kinds of books studying "Shuowen Jiezi" alone, and the so-called "Four Great Masters of Shuowen": Duan Yujie's "Notes on the Interpretation of Texts", Zhu Junsheng's "Commentaries on the Interpretation of Texts and The Sound of Teachings", Gui Fu's "Proof of the Interpretation of Words in Shuowen", and Wang Yun's "Reading of Sayings and Interpretations of Words and Sentences".

It is precisely because Chinese characters are not pinyin characters, and There is no word morphological change in Chinese, so unlike Indian, pronunciation becomes an integral part of grammar, and grammar and phonetics occur very early. In Our country, although the science of grammar was produced very late, the study of phonology also started a little late. The study of phonology in China began with the method of inverse cutting. Because Chinese characters are not pinyin characters, so the pinyin method has not been produced until the end of the Han Dynasty, because of the influence of sanskrit letters, there was a reverse cutting of this unique pinyin method in China: "fetus, big is anti", take the vowel of the upper word, take the vowel of the word, and the vowel and the vowel are combined together, that is, the pronunciation of the cut zigzag is spelled out. Legend has it that Sun Yan of the Three Kingdoms of Wei used reverse cutting to zhuyin ("Erya Yinyi"), so that the first special book in the history of Chinese phonology appeared with reverse cut zhuyin. The study of anti-cutting is very important, because "if there is an anti-language, then the cluster is a rhyme book, and this natural trend is also". It is generally believed that the earliest rhyme books are Li Deng's "Sound Class" in the Wei Dynasty and Lü Jing's "Rhyme Collection" in the Jin Dynasty. The rhyme book according to the four-tone rhyme began about the "Four-Tone Spectrum" of Shen Yue in the Liang Dynasty, and from then on, the tone became an integral part of the rhyme, and the words of different tones could not belong to the same rhyme department. The Sui Dynasty Lu Fayan's "Qie Yun" is the most influential rhyme book, although it has died, but according to its addition and reconstruction of the Song Dynasty Chen Pengnian and other Feng Shu written "Guang Yun" has been preserved, this is the earliest system of complete rhyme book. "Cut Rhyme", "Guang Rhyme" and then, phonology flourished, and works continued to come out, among which the Yuan Dynasty Zhou Deqing's "Zhongyuan Phonology" had the greatest influence and the highest value, which can be regarded as a systematic and rigorous scientific work.

We can see that the characteristics of dry Chinese and Chinese characters, due to the national conditions of our country, hermeneutics, philology and phonology have successively become explicit studies, while the development of grammar is extremely slow, and it was not until the late Qing Dynasty that the "Ma Shi Wentong" established a scientific system. Of course, the ancients still discussed the phenomenon of grammar, and there was still some research on a certain department of grammar.