先秦同义词“言”、“语”辨析

An Analysis to the Chinese Synonyms “yan” and “yu” in the Pre-Qin Periods

将“言”、“语”二字置于先秦这一语言发展的断代进行穷尽式考察 ,分析了“言”、“语”在先秦时期的主要区别 ,认为“言”、“语”作名词时 ,两者都有俗语、谚语、名言之义 ;在表示言论、话语时 ,多数情况下可以通用 ,但在表示相互约定的话这一意义时 ,“语”不可以代替“言”的意义 ;在作动词时 ,其语法功能和词义则既有相同点又有不同点。

An exhaustive observation is made in this paper on the major differences between the Chinese synonyms “yan” and “yu” in the pre-Qin periods. When used as nouns, both words can mean proverbs, slang and famous quotations. Therefore, they can be regarded as the same. When used to mean words or discourse, they can be exchanged in most cases. However, when it is used to mean the words that both the speaker and the listener have already known, “yan” can not be replaced by “yu”. When used as verbs, they share a lot in common and at the same time differ a lot from each other either in terms of grammatical function or semantic meanings.