Linguistics & Languages II

Abstracts

Piccinini, Chiara
Milan Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy

The Xiguo jifa (Western Mnemonics) Treatise: analysis of the Chinese terminology employed by Matteo Ricci in communicating Western concepts

Western mnemonics was first introduced by Matteo Ricci S.J. in China at the end of Sixteenth Century through a Treatise entitled Xiguo jifa (Western Mnemonics); it was written in Chinese and it was meant to help Chinese intellectuals memorizing Chinese Classics which had to be learnt by heart in order to pass Imperial exams. This Treatise is one of the first works written in Chinese by a European intellectual. As such, it contains reference to European cultural concepts which were previously unknown to Chinese intellectuals. In order to transmit these new concepts to the Chinese audience, Ricci had to elaborate lexical strategies that permitted to render effectively some neologisms in Chinese language. In order to do so, he recurred to different strategies: on one hand he made use of semantic loans, that permitted to refer both to terms of the Chinese philosophical tradition and to every-day use language giving them a new specific meaning which attained exclusively to Western Mnemonics: this is the case, for example, of xiang, a word of everyday use in Chinese, that in the Treatise has been used to indicate one of the most important instruments which helped to memorize characters and that corresponds to the word imago in the Latin classical sources. On the other hand, more rarely in the Treatise, Matteo Ricci invented new terms through the use of syntactic loans from words of the model language: this is the case, for example, of the technical term jifa, used by Ricci to transpose the idea of a "method of memorization", the so-called ars memorativa of the Latin sources. In the paper I will analyze some of the most relevant technical terms found in the Treatise, giving some remarks resulting from the observation of the prevailing tendency in the use of semantic loans.

Ho, Che Wah
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Chinese Department, Hong Kong

A Comparison of the Different Translations of the Word 'Zhong' in the Shiji

Sima Qian's Shiji had a tremendous influence on Chinese historiography and prose. Consisting of 130 chapters, the Shiji gives an organized and systematic account of people and things that happened from the earliest legendary times to the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han. This book was so well written that it became the most important work for students of ancient Chinese. It is for this reason that there are so many translations of the Shiji, in vernacular Chinese as well as foreign languages, published in the past fifty years, for example, The Grand Scribe's Records by William H. Nienhauser, Jr., Records of the Historian by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, Records of the Grand Historian by Burton Watson, and the Shiji zhuyi edited by Wang Liqi. The word zhong , meaning "iteration" in ancient times, can be used as a verb or a comparative adverb. Examples are found in the Shiji and other ancient works. This meaning is, however, preserved in modern Cantonese only; so it is easy to have a misunderstanding if one does not have a command of the dialect. Having conducted a comparative study of the examples found in the Shiji, this article points out the inaccuracy in commentaries and translations of the Shiji and attempts to offer an explanation.

Paternico', Luisa Maria
Rome "La Sapienza" University, Oriental Studies, Italy

Martino Martini and Juan Caramuel, the Grammatica Linguae Sinensis in the Diocesan Archive of Vigevano

Seventeenth century Europe was a continent rich of brilliant, eclectic minds supporting the universality of learning. The curiosity about China was at its apex due to the copiousness of information available through travelers, merchants and Jesuit missionaries. One of the fathers of these studies on China, which today we refer to as sinological, was Martino Martini, the main contributor to historical and geographical knowledge about China in the seventeenth century. The circulation of his works among the literati made them look at China to find answers for their quests. Many intellectuals were unsatisfied with Latin and were searching for the primitive language used before the fall of the Babel tower, a language whose meanings were closer to reality, with few words and simple structure. Among them, there were Kircher, Leibniz and the less studied Juan Caramuel. He was a Spanish mathematician who later became bishop in Vigevano (Italy). He was a polymath who researched in many fields, from astronomy to architecture, from linguistics to music, from theology to philosophy. Caramuel was very interested in finding a universal language and having heard about the simplicity of Chinese grammar he wanted to study it. The occasion came when, in Rome in 1656, he met Martino Martini, who was back from China as procurator. A witness of this encounter is the manuscript of a Grammatica Linguae Sinensis preserved in the Diocesan Archives of Vigevano. Giuliano Bertuccioli had identified, in Glasgow, three manuscript copies of Martini's Grammatica Sinica. The manuscript in Vigevano is a small in fol. of 22 pages, with annotations in Latin and Chinese possibly written by Martini, and has many similarities and some discrepancies with those analyzed by Bertuccioli. It might be an original copy that the Jesuit gave to his eminent student while helping him with his study of Chinese.

Si, Jia
Fudan University, History Department, Shanghai, China

Collecting and collection: Protestant missionaries and local Chinese culture of the early nineteenth century

The early nineteenth century was a unique era during which Protestant missionaries attempted to penetrate the pre-existing cultural barriers that divided China from the West, so that they were able to convey a comprehensive range of social information back to their Western audience. Discouraged from making contacts with local people and risking precariousness to learn the language, Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, viewed the task of compiling dictionaries and other reference materials as a struggle to acquire a better knowledge of the Chinese. Dictionaries thus became specialized tools for making fundamental cultural translations, in contrast to the common sense view that they are simply language learning aids. Based on this argument, I will examine both the linguistic and the cultural contexts of Morrison's reference works. In Morrison's eyes, learning vernacular and spoken languages, instead of focusing on written works, was more helpful for understanding what he saw was the real Chinese culture. Therefore, when Morrison was collecting materials for his works, he paid special attention to sources like local sayings, proverbs, vernacular fictions, secular beliefs, and daily customs. This paper will not only analyze the explanations and examples presented by Morrison in his works, but also examine the range of linguistic registers of the represented examples, so as to give a better understanding of the way by which various registers are combined into Morrison's works and how they are related with different social arenas.

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