The Language of the Book of Songs / W.A.C.H. Dobson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dobson, W.A.C.H., author.

Series:

Heritage

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shi jing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (352 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This is the fourth volume in Professor Dobson's pioneering researches into the nature and development of Classical Chinese. The first volume, Late Archaic Chinese, appeared in 1959 and laid the foundations for a systematic and scientific study of the grammar of Classical Chinese. It described specifically the language of the 4th-3rd centuries B.C. The second volume, Early Archaic Chinese, published in 1962, described the language of the 11th and 10th centuries B.C. through the decipherment of a corpus of bronze inscriptions hitherto imperfectly understood. Late Han Chinese, the third volume, appeared in 1964. In this volume the inquiry was carried into the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. and the shift from Archaic to Classical Chinese was studied. In this, the fourth volume, the language of the Book of Songs, a classic anthology of verse, is analysed and described. The Book of Songs uniquely provides data from the 9th and 8th centuries B.C., though it ranges in its entirety from the 10th to the 7th centuries B.C. This study, together with its predecessors, and with monographs that have appeared simultaneously, constitutes a historical survey of the Chinese language from the 10th century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D. Linguistic analysis of the text of the Book of Songs adds considerably to our knowledge of the history and development of the language. But such analysis, too, makes an important contribution to the solving of problems with which literary historians are concerned. For example, much light is shed on the dating and authorship of individual pieces: it is now possible to arrange the poems in chronological order. By a study of the formulaic phrases, the history of the development of the various genres can be traced. In examining the development of prosodic devices, linguistic analysis offers much information on the origin and development of poetry in China. This book contains, in addition to an analysis and description of the language, appendices which tabulate the occurrences and distribution of the formulaic phrases, and which enumerate the departures from prose writing that Chinese poets make-the "licence" they take with language. An index of Chinese grammatical auxiliaries is also provided, which, with similar indices in previous volumes, constitutes the most comprehensive dictionary of classical particles yet to appear.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Word

Chapter 2. Syntagma

Chapter 3. The Verbal Sentence

Chapter 4. The Determinative Sentence

Chapter 5. The Vocative Form

Chapter 6. Sentences in Distribution

Chapter 7. Substitution

Chapter 8. Miscellaneous

Chapter 9. Linguistic Strata in the Book of Songs

Appendices

List of Works Mentioned

Lexicon and Index of Words Treated at Some Length

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Jun 2017)

ISBN:

1-4426-5380-9

OCLC:

992472329