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| A Study of the Formation of Phonetic-Semantic Matching of “Ting (听)” from the Perspective of the Phonetic Notions in Jingdian Shiwen |
| Wang Yueting |
| School of Humanities, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China |
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Abstract The phonetic and semantic matching of “ting (听)” has been widely discussed by scholars in the past dynasties, and the academia has been arguing on some specific issues about it. In order to reveal clearly the formation of the phonetic and semantic matching of “ting” and the causes of the disagreements, this paper comprehensively investigates the pronunciation, meaning and syntax as well as their interrelationship of “ting” in Jingdian Shiwen. The major findings are as follows:1.“ting still conforms to the common rules of pronunciation variation in ancient Chinese: when “ting” is followed by content, its pronunciation would be the first tone in mandarin; when followed by target, the pronunciation differs and becomes the fourth tone.About “ting+content”: (i) The “content” is usually nominal. For instance, in the Book of Rites: “There was a woman crying at the tomb and mourning, and Confucius carefully listened (about her crying).” here “ting” means “listen about”. (ii) If the subject lets the event happen after he/she hears certain information, then “ting” extends to the meaning of “resign oneself to”, and is followed by an event. For instance, in the Book of Rites: Shi (士), the lowest class of nobility, will not allow such things to happen when a Dafu (大夫), who is the higher class of nobility, comes in person and congratulates on his joyful event, because Shi dares not to be disrespectful. ”The subject-verb structure “Dafu comes and congratulates on his joyful event” is the object of “ting”. (iii) When the meaning of “ting” is “resign oneself to” and the subject-object interrelationship is from the higher hierarchy towards the lower, then “ting” means “allow”. For instance, in Tso Chuan: “People in Jin State permitted the detained Wei emperor to return to his state.” Note: As Shuwu participated in the treaty of alliance on the land of Jiantu, Jin people then permitted Wei emperor to return.2. Content and target, they are different but closely related, so their boundaries are not necessarily inseparable. Take “ting ming (听命)” as an example, (i) While marching for a battle, the soldiers “ting” the instruction in front of the tent, here is “ting+content”. In Shangshu: “Gong (公) said: ‘Hush! Be quite! Listen carefully about my instruction!’” (ii) However, the instruction needs the listener to execute, so “ting ming” is much often illustrated as “listen to sb”. Here “ming (命)” can be understood as target. For example, in Guoyu: “One’s physical strength cannot afford amours and weapons, one’s will is incapable of listening to the instruction (by sb).” But please note that here “listen to the instruction (by sb)” is derived from “listen about the content of instruction”, and is initially different from “listen to sb”. While Lu Deming adopts ting’s first tone in mandarin, Xu Miao chooses the fourth tone according to the semantic meaning of ting in this sentence. This actually reflects a controversy that the ancient people have long had different views on whether its pronunciation should follow its origin or the extensional meaning when a word applies an extensional meaning.3. Such use case of fu ting (弗听): here “ting” means “listen to”, and as mentioned above, ting should accordingly be pronounced in the fourth tone，but Jingdian Shiwen notes it as the first tone. This is because fu (弗) is used in a perfect form to express negation; that is to say, the phrase “fu ting” means a negative result. So “ting”, which originally refers to “listen to”, is now pronounced in the first tone to mark the perfect aspect. This phrase barely has an object.About “ting+target”: (i) The basic structure is “ting+person. For example, in Tso Chuan: “Though it’s my family issue, we will listen to you.” Here “ting”means “listen to”. (ii) The person in a negative sentence can be pre-positioned. For example, in the Book of Songs: “The emperor said: The jade for sacrifice is used up, but the god still doesn’t listen to me!” (iii) The target may also give further instructions. In Tso Chuan: “Song people arrested Zhai Zhong from Zheng.” Note: Zhai Zhong had listened to Song people’s threat and expelled his own emperor. The object of “ting” in this structure has some control over the subject, which makes it relate to bi-constituent sentences and is different from the above application “permit Wei emperor to return”.
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Received: 19 May 2021
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2021, Vol. 51 
