Lexicology in the last fifty years has been the object of an extensive debate in order to formulate the best definition of its field of enquiry and methodology. One of the latest descriptions has been given by Eluerd (2000: 10-11), who says that lexicology is ‘l’étude des vocabularies: un vocabulaire est un ensemble de mots ou de sequences figées apparaissant dans un même domaine d’usage’. Lexicology can thus be defined the study of the words of a given language belonging to a given lexical domain, taken into consideration within their own context, together with the net of semantic relationships in which they usually are embedded and not extracted from. In the last fifteen years, a number of semantic fields of the whole Chinese lexicon have been subjected to such an investigation, aimed at shedding a light on the relationships between words and the historical, social and political background from which they stemmed; in particular, many Chinese scientific terminologies, created by means of translation of foreign texts, have been analysed in order to describe the major patterns of coinage of neologisms in the Chinese language (as Masini 1993). Only in the latest collections of articles (as Lackner and Vittinghof 2004) has the relationship between words and their very inventors been examined, so to highlight even the personal reasons for given lexical choices and the use of words in given contexts. This contribution shows the results of a lexicological investigation of the words for grammar in Chinese. The goal of such an enquiry was to categorize the main morphological patterns of coinage of the words of the grammatical realm, to draw the lines of the historical trends of these patterns and to formulate hypotheses about the connection between linguistic evidence and the historical facts of such a pivotal historical span as the second half of the XIX century and the first two decades of the XX century. The period taken into account stretches from 1859, when one of the first Latin grammars written in Chinese, the Lading wenzi by the Jesuit Angelo Zottoli, appeared, and to 1924, when the Chinese linguist Li Jinxi published the Xinzhu guoyu wenfa. In the former, there are the earliest attempts to create Chinese denominations for grammatical notions, which Chinese traditional linguistics lacked; the latter, which was quickly adopted by the majority of Chinese school as reference grammar, caused some of the denominations coined in the previous decades to enter definitely Chinese lexicon, overcoming all the competing terms. Between these two grammars a number of texts were composed, in which different lexical choices motivated the coinage of various words. Among the works taken into exams are both grammars of the Chinese language, as the Mashi wentong, by Ma Jianzhong (1898) or the Guowenfa caochuang, by Chen Chengze (1922) and grammars of the English language, as the Yingwen hangu, by Yan Fu (1904) and the Nashi Yingwenfa jiangyi, translation of Nesfield’s Grammar (1909).
A lexicological outline of the introduction, development and stabilization of the words for grammar in China, 1859-1924
PELLIN, TOMMASO
2008-01-01
Abstract
Lexicology in the last fifty years has been the object of an extensive debate in order to formulate the best definition of its field of enquiry and methodology. One of the latest descriptions has been given by Eluerd (2000: 10-11), who says that lexicology is ‘l’étude des vocabularies: un vocabulaire est un ensemble de mots ou de sequences figées apparaissant dans un même domaine d’usage’. Lexicology can thus be defined the study of the words of a given language belonging to a given lexical domain, taken into consideration within their own context, together with the net of semantic relationships in which they usually are embedded and not extracted from. In the last fifteen years, a number of semantic fields of the whole Chinese lexicon have been subjected to such an investigation, aimed at shedding a light on the relationships between words and the historical, social and political background from which they stemmed; in particular, many Chinese scientific terminologies, created by means of translation of foreign texts, have been analysed in order to describe the major patterns of coinage of neologisms in the Chinese language (as Masini 1993). Only in the latest collections of articles (as Lackner and Vittinghof 2004) has the relationship between words and their very inventors been examined, so to highlight even the personal reasons for given lexical choices and the use of words in given contexts. This contribution shows the results of a lexicological investigation of the words for grammar in Chinese. The goal of such an enquiry was to categorize the main morphological patterns of coinage of the words of the grammatical realm, to draw the lines of the historical trends of these patterns and to formulate hypotheses about the connection between linguistic evidence and the historical facts of such a pivotal historical span as the second half of the XIX century and the first two decades of the XX century. The period taken into account stretches from 1859, when one of the first Latin grammars written in Chinese, the Lading wenzi by the Jesuit Angelo Zottoli, appeared, and to 1924, when the Chinese linguist Li Jinxi published the Xinzhu guoyu wenfa. In the former, there are the earliest attempts to create Chinese denominations for grammatical notions, which Chinese traditional linguistics lacked; the latter, which was quickly adopted by the majority of Chinese school as reference grammar, caused some of the denominations coined in the previous decades to enter definitely Chinese lexicon, overcoming all the competing terms. Between these two grammars a number of texts were composed, in which different lexical choices motivated the coinage of various words. Among the works taken into exams are both grammars of the Chinese language, as the Mashi wentong, by Ma Jianzhong (1898) or the Guowenfa caochuang, by Chen Chengze (1922) and grammars of the English language, as the Yingwen hangu, by Yan Fu (1904) and the Nashi Yingwenfa jiangyi, translation of Nesfield’s Grammar (1909).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
