先秦经典中“易”字释义研究——以《左传》《易经》为主要语料的考察

The Interpretation of“Yi”(易)in the Pre-Qin Classics:A Study on the Main Corpus from Zuo Zhuan and The Book of Changes

“易”字是先秦经典中的常用字,在《左传》中出现多达88次。传统上,把此字解释为“变化”“不易”“简易”“交易”等。根据认知语言学中多义词由核心本义引申的理论,以《左传》《易经》中的语料为依据,分析经典中包含“易”字的典型句,可以发现,“易”字的本义指“放手”,引申义为“放肆”“更换”“交换”“平易”“平整”等。由此可知,《论语》“丧,与其易也,宁戚”中的“易”指超越规格,《孟子》“易其田畴”中的“易”指“平整”,在《管子》“圣者乘易”中则指“放手”。

“Yi”(易)is a common word in the pre-Qin classics,which appears as many as 88 times in Zuo Zhuan.Traditionally,the word is interpreted as“change”,“no change”,“easy”,“transaction”and so on.According to the theory that polysemous words are extended from the core original meaning in cognitive linguistics,and based on the corpus in Zuo Zhuan and The Book of Changes,this paper analyzes the typical sentences containing the word“Yi”in the classics.It can be found that the original meaning of“Yi”refers to“letting go”.The extended meanings are“disobedience”,“replace”,“exchange”,“plain”,“smooth”and so on.As a result,it is concluded that in the sentence of“丧,与其易也,宁戚”in The Analects of Confucius,Yi refers to“the exceeding specifications”;in the sentence of“易其田畴”in Mencius,Yi refers to“smooth”;and in the sentence of“圣者乘易”in Guan Zi,Yi refers to“letting go”.