Draft:Chinese philology
| Philology | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 小學 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 小学 | ||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | lesser learning | ||||||||||||
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| Korean name | |||||||||||||
| Hangul | 소학 | ||||||||||||
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| Japanese name | |||||||||||||
| Kanji | 小学 | ||||||||||||
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In traditional Confucian scholarship, philology (Chinese: 小學; pinyin: xiǎoxué; lit. 'lesser learning') within the Sinosphere revolved around study of the language of the Chinese classics. Starting during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), the Chinese language had evolved considerably from the c. 6th–3rd century BC form represented in these texts, now known as Classical Chinese. As written characters in usually correspond to words rather than sounds, the pronunciations of characters shifted and diverged over time with the development of the varieties of Chinese, and eventually required elaborate reconstructions by scholars. Chinese philology focused on elements of the etymology, pronunciation, and graphical form of words in the Classical lexicon. Early scholarly output encompassed Chinese dictionaries like the Erya (c. 3rd century BC), Fangyan (c. 1st century AD), and Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100 AD), which each established concepts central to the autochthonous understanding of the nature of the Chinese language. The field was called 'lesser learning' to contrast it with the 'greater learning' of direct
Origins[edit]
It is not clear that Classical Chinese authors used a concept of "words" or "word-meaning" analogous to that in the Western paradigm, and thus there was no obvious notion of parts of speech. During the classical period, there was a common preoccupation with names (名 míng); from the Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100 AD) onward, there was also the clear notion of characters (字 zì). The first clear indication of Chinese authors encountering the concept of "words" is in the translation of and commentary on Sanskrit Buddhist texts during the 5th century.[1] While written characters were always discretized and always correspond one-to-one with monosyllabic morphemes, abstract segments of language like 辞 cí, 言 yán, and 文 wén are not consistently defined from text to text, as they are for modern Chinese writers.[2]
Scope and purpose[edit]
Etymology[edit]
訓詁
Phonology[edit]
音韻
Graphology[edit]
文字
1600–1850: Kaozheng[edit]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
- ^ Geaney 2022, p. 5.
- ^ Geaney 2022, pp. 23–31.
Works cited[edit]
- Boltz, William G. (1994). The origin and early development of the Chinese writing system. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society. ISBN 978-0-940-49078-9.
- Branner, David Prager, ed. (2006). The Chinese Rime Tables: Linguistic Philosophy and Historical-Comparative Phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN 978-9-027-24785-8. OCLC 62493609.
- Geaney, Jane (2022). The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-438-48893-6.
- Handel, Zev (2019). Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script. Brill. ISBN 978-9-004-35222-3.
- Henderson, John B. (1991). Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-06832-9.
- Li, Yuming (2015). Language Planning in China. Language Policies and Practices in China. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-1-614-51558-6.
- Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29653-3.
- O'Neill, Timothy Michael (2016). Ideography and Chinese Language Theory: A History. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-110-45923-4.
- Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1998). "Qieyun and Yunjing: The Essential Foundation for Chinese Historical Linguistics". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 118 (2): 200. JSTOR 605891.
- Qiu Xigui (裘锡圭) (2000) [1988]. Chinese Writing. Translated by Mattos, Gilbert L.; Norman, Jerry. Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. ISBN 978-1-557-29071-7.
- Xue, Shiqi (1982). "Chinese Lexicography Past and Present". Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America. 4 (1): 151–169. doi:10.1353/dic.1982.0009. ISSN 2160-5076.
- Yong, Heming; Peng, Jing (2008). Chinese Lexicography: A History from 1046 BC to AD 1911. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-191-56167-2.