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Decipherment of the Word Yu in the Shang Oracle Bone Inscriptions and in Pre-Classical Chinese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

K. Takashima
K. Takashima*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

The recent attempt by Professor David S. Nivison to show that (= yu )/ yu in early Archaic Chinese functioned as a “pronominal” word encourages one to think that the language of bone inscriptions, though arcane and difficult, is, after all, manageable, and that it may be used to understand the later, more evolved language, rather than the other way around. The various arguments in his theory are both well presented and accompanied by rich and meticulous documentation from inscriptions and from pre-Classical texts.

Nivison takes the word yu as a pronominal adjective, variously rendered, according to the context, as “his,” “her,” “our,” “your,” “their,” “the,” “there,” “some,” “of it/them,” “about it,” and “in this matter.” These context-sensitive renditions are possible because yu is construed as a word whose grammatical functions, rather than its fixed meaning, are realized in these various readings. One major contribution of Nivison is that he has shown that the word yu, in certain contexts, functioned attributively. Whether it also did or did not function “pronominally” is the topic with which this paper is concerned primarily.

Type
Articles
Information
Early China , Volume 4 , 1978 , pp. 19 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1978

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References

FOOTNOTES

1. See Nivison, David S., “The Pronominal Use of the Verb Yu (Giǔg: ) in Early Archaic Chinesê,” Early China, No. 3 (1977), pp. 1–17Google Scholar, hereinafter abbreviated as “Pronominal Use.” For the evidence that , and represent the same word throughout the linguistic history of pre-Classical Chinese, see my Negatives in the King Wu Tinq Bone Inscriptions. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1973)Google Scholar, hereinafter “Negatives,” pp. 27-31.

2. For bibliographical data concerning the original or reprinted rubbings, the reader is referred to the abbreviated titles used in Keightley, David N., Sources of Shanq History, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)Google Scholar and Kunio, ShimaInkyō bokuji sōrui revised ed. (Tokcyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1971), p. 589Google Scholar.

3. This characterization ignores the fact that, although the renditions (his, her, our, etc.) refer to some specific person(s), the paraphrase of these as “one's” does not refer to any specific person. Given the appropriate environment, however, such a cover-all Interpretation as “one's” will be realized as any one of these renditions. And this is applicable to Nivison's claim made on p. 6: “Yu () retains its reference, of course, only within the context that generates it, but that is true of any pronoun.” Yet there are problems,as will be discussed below.

4. See Mo-jo, Kuo, Ku-tai ming-k'e hui-k'ao hsüpien. (1934), pp. 6a–8aGoogle Scholar; Hu Hou-hsuan, Chia-ku-hsüeh shang-shih lun-ts'ung, Ch'u-chi , Shang , “Yin-tai feng-chien chih-tu k'ao ” (1944), p. 4a; Meng-chia, Ch'en, Pu-tz'u tsunq-shu (Peking: K'e-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1956), p. 492Google Scholar.

5. Kunio, Shima, Inkyō bokuji kenkyū (Hirosaki: Chūgokugaku kenkyūkai, 1958), pp. 454–60Google Scholar; Shizuka, Shirakawa, “Bokuji no sekai , Chapter IV of Kodai In teikoku , ed. by Shigeki, Kaizuka (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō 1967), pp. 230-1Google Scholar; Shigeki, Kaizuka, Chūgoku kodai shigaku no hatten (Tokyo: Kōbundō Shoten, 1946), pp. 299–300Google Scholar.

6. See his, “Fu-X Ladies of the Shang Dynasty,” Monumenta Serica, Vol. XXIX (1970–1971), pp. 355–6Google Scholar.

7. “one-place, two-place, and three-place” verbs are “a classification of verbs in terms of the number of nominais with which they combine in the nuclei of sentences,” a definition given by Lyons, John, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 350Google Scholar.

8. Takashlma, K., “Negatives pp. 336–8Google Scholar; idem, “The Survival of the Fittest Bones -- A Critique of Professor David S, Nivison's Recent Papers on the Concept of Royal ‘Virtue’ Te,” (type-script, 25 pp., January, 1977), p. 10.

9. Ch'u Wan-li noticed that yu in is the same as yu in such phrases as saying that yu is “.” See his Hsiao-t'un II, Yin-hsü wen-tzu, chia-pien k'ao-shih 2 vols. (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1961), p. 128/No.807Google Scholar.

10. See Onions, C.T., ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Enqlish Etymology (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 914Google Scholar.

11. Skeat, Walter W., A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the Enqlish Language (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 550Google Scholar.

12. Nivison advanced a “plural definite article theory” for yu in his paper entitled “Existence and Identification: an Unsolved Grammatical Problem Concerning the Word Yu ‘There Is…” (March, 1973; typescript). The idea that yu conveyed a plural sense is acceptable, but that it also had a definite referring function is not, as has been argued in this paper.

13. Karlgren, Bernhard, The Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), p. 114Google Scholar.

14. See Kunio, Shima, Inkyō bokuji kenkyū, p. 91Google Scholar.

15. Notice that English “some” basically means “unspecified” or “indefinite,” but it can mean “considerable in number, amount, degree, etc.” as in “We talked for some time.” Al so, it can mean “good or bad quality” as in “That was some dinner!”

16. Consider the difference in underlying structure of the phrase analyzed earlier; i.e., if expressed in classical Chinese * (aid for our attacking the Kung-fang). The inscription forming a tui-chen with is , in which, if we follow Nivison, ) cannot be analyzed as * (sc. )] as is argued here. That is, for Nivison in stands for , so that * must be analyzed as, if expressed in Classical Chinese, * , which is very different from my own analysis * . The latter analysis seems preferable to the former for the following reasons: (1) can be written as “ + vb” which is equivalent to (III. 2, this paper) (2) the subject of seems “ambient” or simply “unexpressed” (i.e., is an existential, rather than, possessive, verb); and (3) the derivation of in * has a more solid linguistic foundation than Nivison's *. It is in (3) that the reasoning is repetitious, but not circular.

17. The citation from the Shang-shu follows the numbering system given by Chieh-kang, Ku (ed.), Shang-shu t'ung-chien (1936)Google Scholar.

18. Karlgren, Bernhard, The Book of Documents (Stockholm: Museum of Far Lastern Antiquities, 1950)Google Scholar.

19. Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, Vol. 3, The Shoo King (reprinted in Taipei: Wen-hsing Shu-tien, 1966), p. 70Google Scholar.

20. Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, Vol. 5, The Ch'un Ts'ew with The Tso Chuen (reprinted in Taipei: Wen-hsing Shu-tien, 1966)Google Scholar.

21. Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, Vol. 4, The She King (reprinted in Taipei: Wen-hsing Shu-tien, 1966)Google Scholar; Karlgren, Bernhard, The Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Anqituities, 1950)Google Scholar.

22. Karlgren, Bernhard, “Glosses on the Siao Ya Odes,” BMFEA, No. 16 (1944), p. 119Google Scholar.

23. Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, Vol. 1 Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Mean (reprlnted in Taipei: Wen-hsing Shu-tien, 1966), p. 153Google Scholar.

24. Li, Wang, Han-yü shih-kao (Peking: K'e-hsüeh ch'u-pan'she, Vol. 2, p. 219Google Scholar.

25. See his Ku-shih-pien (reprinted in Taipei: Ming-lun ch'u-pa-she, 1970), Vol. 2, pp. 50–57Google Scholar.

26. Ibid., p. 53.