This paper attempts to show that the word sì 巳(祀) used after the negative wù 勿 or wú 毋 functions as a “Vintransitive” (all the abbreviations and references used in this paper are given at the end of Part I). As such, it forms a VP, 勿/毋V1V2, where V2 is always one of the six “Type-A ritual Vs”—one being dăo 禱 ‘to pray’, the rest given in the paper. The semantic relationship between V1 (巳/祀) and V2 is closely examined. There are also inscriptions in which V1 is used before yú 于, a “multidirectional” preposition. This is labelled as “Nloc in the sense of ‘in, at’ (not ‘to, for’)” in the construction given in the title. The paper accounts for its motive principle. The paper argues that 巳/祀 is a Vaction meaning “conduct sì-providential ritual”. It was done at a place to seek divine direction and guidance from the deity or Power believed to have dwelt in situ. Originally presented in Takashima (2009a), this paper delves further into linguistic, philological, and cultural aspects of the 巳-ritual couched in the VP, 勿/毋V1(=巳/祀)V2. A major reason for its use is to contrast the 巳-ritual with other rituals and sacrifices. The details will be explained with examples. Part I covers “Examination I: Zhū Shēngyù’s Questions and Zhāng Yùjīn’s Interpretation”. The paper answers the former and evaluates the latter. Part II begins with “Examination II: Qiú Xīguī’s Interpretation” and ends with the conclusions of the entire paper.

Aspects of the liu shu 六書 theory continue to be used today to analyse Chinese characters, yet most scholars are unaware of the historical context out of which the theory emerged and the controversies surrounding its both initial and subsequent interpretations. I trace the origins of the theory to the Eastern Han and compare its three earliest rival formulations. Subsequent centuries saw a proliferation of interpretations which rendered any attempt at a unified vision of Chinese writing impossible. The trend of adding new explanations was only reversed by the Qing scholars Dai Zhen and Duan Yucai who, drawing on some of the earliest explanations, argued that the theory encapsulated not only the way characters were composed but also their exegesis. Even if they laid the ground for a shared interpretation, Dai and Duan’s take on the Eastern Han scholar Xu Shen did not go unchallenged. I discuss Zhang Taiyan’s and Lu Zongda’s criticism and their attempts to reconcile aspects of the traditional framework with modern linguistics. I finally contrast this updating of an ancient theory with the approach of Qiu Xigui who selectively discards one of the principles and thereby the very feasibility of the framework as a whole.

This article delves into the development of Japanese Chinese character variations, and how they fit into the broader study of Chinese characters. By examining the differences between early Japanese kanji and modern Japanese writing systems, as well as the varying approaches of Chinese and Japanese scholars in studying Japanese kanji, we can propose a more fitting classification and naming method better suited to studying Chinese characters. To that end, we take the Wamyō Ruiju Shō (倭名類聚抄) as an example, exhaustively sorting out the situation of variant characters in the manuscript across different eras, and referring to other ancient Chinese dictionaries from the same period. This article introduces concepts like “inherited variants” and “Japan saved variants” to make studying these characters more comprehensive.

The two most well-known Chinese characters dictionaries are Songben Yupian from China and Quanyun Yupian from Korea. These dictionaries contain a wealth of information on Chinese characters at the diachronic and synchronic level, while also retaining much information on Chinese characters during the period of its movement overseas. This paper is a corpus-based study which analyzes the differences in the style of arrangement, phonetic notation mode, interpretation, form interpretation, and other aspects of the two dictionaries, and further summarizes the laws of the development of Chinese characters in overseas dissemination. The result of this study indicates that the function of the two dictionaries is different, that the Chinese characters remained stable during their transmission to other countries, and that the overall trend in the evolution of the characters is toward simplification, and that the main way that Chinese characters morph extraterritorially is via phonetic and semantic replacement.

According to traditional philological materials such as Shuowen Jiezi and oracle bone inscriptions, the original meaning of the character 得 is “get”. This article takes the Book of Mencius as closed materials, exhaustively categorizing all entries of 得 in Mencius, totaling 114 examples. Then we analyze semantic content and grammatical features references to the four commentaries from Zhao Qi , Sun Shi, Zhu Xi, Jiao Xun. We find that all examples of 得 are used as verbs, but there are 12 examples where it is used as a delexical verb, exemplifies the gradual trend of semantic attenuation of 得. After conducting linguistic analysis of the character 得, we explore its manifestation of the philosophical ideas in Mencius, including aspects of personal cultivation, interpersonal relationships, and governance wisdom. Through the interaction of language and cultural analysis, we further deepen our study of the language theory and ancient classics culture.

The subject of this paper is the language usage within legal discourse, with the corpus sourced from the legislation of the People’s Republic of China. Zhang Deming (1989) believes that “register is a scientific term in the category of language stylistics, a ‘functional style’ of language formed due to different communicative functions of language use. This system has a series of commonalities in linguistic materials (elements) and rhetorical methods, and there are a series of differences and corresponding patterns between different systems.” According to his view, the legal register has distinctive features which differ from other registers. This paper describes and interprets the syntactic, lexical, and register aspects of legal discourse, along with the linguistic style inherent in legal language.

Similar to Sumerian proto-cuneiform writing, the nature of Chinese writing is fundamentally ideographic, in which concepts or thoughts are represented visually rather than through abstract speech sounds. This paper explores ten ways to form Chinese characters by using the decoded characters through their ideograms. A character comes from thoughts, the thoughts come from images, and the images themselves come from the object or the event depicted. Therefore, the same character can be used in different dialects or languages to depict the same concepts. Only when there are enough ideograms to create their graphs for phonography can we develop phonography. During the first stage of hundreds of years, most Sumerian clay characters were pictograms and ideograms. The majority of the phono-semantic compounds appeared in the second stage when the foreign Akkadians used Sumerian characters. Just as the majority of Shang bone characters were pictograms and ideograms, most phono-semantic compound characters were modified and created by the foreign Zhou people later. At present, western theories have not followed the traditional path to the meaning of thought. The ten strategies of ideographic writing are the conventional path to the meaning of thought, rather than a bridge between language.

This article explores the different meanings of the number ‘three’ in proverbs. According to the analysis of this article, the number ‘three’ in proverbs, while carrying the basic meaning of quantity, has more expanded meanings in Korean, Chinese and Japanese proverbs, where it may mean ‘many’, ‘all (whole)’, ‘part’, ‘small’, and even more abstracted concepts. In contrast, the number ‘three’ in the English proverbs is largely biased towards negative meanings. At the end of this study, the analysis of the number ‘three’ in proverbs through machine translation shows that machine translation has many limitations on the translation of the many meanings of the number ‘three’.

Zhong Hua Zi Jing is Chinese teaching material promoted nationwide and overseas for the purpose of “fast literacy and early reading”, which covers Level 4 Chinese characters specified in the HSK exam outline. Its content includes knowledge of fifty major categories, including astronomy, geography, human relations, history, and the like. Therefore, this study is based on Xu Tongqiang’s sinogram-based theory. This paper proposes a teaching plan using the Zhong Hua Zi Jing in teaching Chinese as a foreign language in order to achieves positive results in vocabulary and Chinese character learning. A survey was first conducted on Korean students in years three and four of the Chinese language major to demonstrate their level of understanding of Chinese characters included in Zhong Hua Zi Jing, and to elucidate the level of understanding of Chinese characters Zhong Hua Zi Jing. Then, the necessity and specific solutions of using Zhong Hua Zi Jing to teach vocabulary mainly based on Chinese characters was explored.

󰡔유몽천자(牖蒙千字)󰡕는 한국개신교선교사 게일(James Scarth Gale(한국명 : 奇一), 1863-1937)과 그의 조사(pundit) 이창직(李昌稙, 1866-1936)이 함께 편찬한 경신 학교와 정신여학교의 교과서이다. 이 책은 총 4권으로 구성된 교재다. 여기에 실린 내용 은 자연과학, 사회과학, 서양의 역사, 서양의 인물, 서양의 문학, 우리의 한문고전에 관한 것 등으로 이루어져 있다. 더불어 개화기에 우리의 어문 생활에 필요하다고 생각한 한자 와 관련 정보, 한자어, 국한문, 한문에 관한 지식을 정식 학교 교육을 받는 학생들에게 알 려 주기 위하여 편찬한 것이다. 본고에서는 이러한 󰡔유몽천자󰡕 전집의 체계와 구성, 전 집을 구성하는 3가지 문체 유형, 그리고 전집에 새겨져 있는 개신교선교사의 문체실험의 역사를 고찰했다.