W.A.C.H. Dobson – författare

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.

This book continues and carries a stage further Professor Dobson's pioneering researches into the nature and development of Classical Chinese. He has here compared a Late Archaic text with a paraphrase of that text written in Late Han Chinese. From that comparison he describes in systematic detail the changes that occur in Classical Chinese in the intervening five hundred years. These changes, unlike the changes that take place between Early and Middle and Middle and Late Archaic Chinese, which are formal only, show a fundamental shift. The "empty words" of Classical Chinese which, in Archaic Chinese, are crucial as grammatical indicators, in Late Han become, as later philogists have traditionally described them, "full words." Many Archaic particles become obsolete in Late Han. The "full words" in Late Han, by contrast, perform a more predictable grammatical function. Periphrastic forms replace "participles" for negation, mood, voice, and the like. "Full words" tend towards compounding and to greater restriction in syntactical deployment. This change Professor Dobson characterizes as "the Archaic-Han Shift." The Archaic-Han Shift anticipates features of the Chinese language which are familiar in Modern Standard Chinese.This book contains, in addition, appendices describing the notions of Late Han scholars about language, the differences between "classical" and "literary" Chinese in the Late Han period, and features of Late Han which anticipate grammatical features of Modern Standard Chinese.Late Han Chinese, together with the author's earlier works, Late Archaic Chinese and Early Archaic Chinese, constitutes a significant chapter of research in the history and development of the Chinese language. Each contains a lexicon of grammatical particles for its respective period. Late Han Chinese will take its place, together with its predecessors, as a standard reference work for all future students of the Chinese language.

This dictionary treats some 694 particles, the nuclei, as it were, of the grammar of Classical Chinese. It includes all the auxiliaries (modals, aspectuals, etc.); the markers of grammatical relationships; the conjunctions, numerals, and markers of enumeration; the substitutes (pronouns, demonstratives, and interrogative and indefinite substitutes); and the interjections and allegro forms which occur in classical literature from its beginnings top the Six Dynasties.Copius examples of usage and currency are given and cross-references to concordances and other reference works are supplied, the whole designed to provide for the student of the Chinese language a reference work of a kind that hitherto has not existed.In the Prolegomenon, the problems of the particles and the part they play in the grammar of Classical Chinese are considered, and the particles are classified. In the Dictionary proper, the particles are treated individually; their functions are described and illustrated by textual examples, which are translated for the convenience of the user. Following the Dictionary are a Radical Chart and Radical Index, by radical and stroke count, a table for conversion from the Wades-Giles system of romanization to the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system, and a list of characters with obscure radicals by total stroke count.