Chinese Lexicography on Matters of the Heart: An Exploratory Commentary on the Heart Radical in Shuō wén jiě zì

Authors:
Françoise Bottéro & Christoph Harbsmeier

Publication date:
2016

Publisher:
EHESS, Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale

Abstract:

“The Chinese Shuōwén Dictionary (AD 100) by Xǔ Shèn is the most famous book in the history of Chinese philology, and it is one of the most important documents in the history of linguistics and lexicography of the world. This stunningly ambitious dictionary explains systematically why 9,353 Chinese characters including nearly all the common characters of the time were written exactly the way they came to be written. Thus the Shuōwén is a vast systematised encyclopaedia of the principles of literacy in one of the most literate civilisations of the ancient world.

This book sets out to explain Xǔ Shèn’s scientific principles as well as the details of their implementation in his Dictionary by providing an extensive introduction to the whole work, followed by a detailed annotated “thick” reading of the section of the Shuōwén that focusses mainly on the ancient Chinese psychological vocabulary.”

Table of Contents:                                                                                

1. Introduction                                                                                                     
       1.1. The Shuōwén is not a Dictionary of Basic Meanings of Words       

       1.2. The Composition of the Lexical Entries in Shuōwén                       

       1.3. Taboos and Omissions              
                                                               
       1.4. The Significance of the Style of the Head Graph                       

       1.5. Graphemic Versus Graphic Analysis                                       

       1.6. The Significance of the Number of Radicals                         

       1.7. The Nature of the Radicals                                                 

       1.8. The Assignment of Radicals Versus the Designation of Semantic

            Constituents                                                                         

       1.9. The Shuōwén Entries on Radicals                                               

       1.10.Semantic Classification Versus Subsumption Under Radicals           

       1.11. The Hermeneutics of Xǔ Shèn's Glosses                                 

       1.12. The "Six Ways of Writing Down (Words)"liù shū 六書                       

       1.13. Problems with the Use of huì yì 會意                                                   
       1.14. Phonetics                                                                                 

       1.15. The Vicious Circle of Reconstruction on the Basis of Phonetic
                Series 

       1.16. Observations-Based Versus Conjectural Reconstructions         

       1.17. The Dú ruò 讀若"to be Pronounced Like" Problem                         

       1.18. A Caveat on our Translation of Shuōwén                               

       1.19. A Note on our Use of Sources                                                             

2. Chinese Lexicography on Matters of the Heart                                             

       2.1. Preliminary Remarks on the Heart Radical                                         

       2.2. The Heart Constituent is Never Taken as Phonetic                       

       2.3. Disused Archaic Heart Radicals                                                           

3. Annotated Translation of Shuō wén jiě zì, Xīn Bù 心部                   

4. Appendix: Radicals Containing the Grapheme 心not Classified

       under the Heart Radical                                                                   

5. Conclusion