A Study on the 'Language Root' Theory of Zhang Taiyan: Concurrent Discussion on Its Bidimensionality and Function of Language Root

摘要

The "language root" theory of Zhang Taiyan opens a new way of etymological derivation based on root. It takes "every piece of language has its root" as the guiding principle, "words with the same sound have similar meanings" as the criterion, and uses "chuwen (the initial writing of a word) and (quasi-chuwen)," as the basis. In practice, it conducts etymology deduction in the two directions of bianyi and ziru with the meaning and phonetic alternation as the precondition. Through a two-dimension analysis of the "language root" theory, this paper makes a correspondence of the theory and the connotation and denotation in logic, and further proposes the "root function". In this way the universality and scientificity of Zhang's "root theory" are demonstrated and thus provide more firm theoretical support for etymological deduction.