New research on bronze inscriptions sheds light on lexical history
Chinese bronze inscriptions
A recent study on the vocabulary, specifically verbs, used in Chinese bronze inscriptions was selected for sponsorship in the third series of the National Social Science Fund 2012. The project is the “Vocabulary Research on Bronze Script Verbs of both Western and Eastern Zhou Dynasties”, was conducted by Professor Wu Zhenyu from the College of the Humanities at Jilin University. Second only to the oracle bone script, bronze inscriptions (on ancient Chinese bronze vessels and other objects) of the Western and Eastern Zhou Dynasties belong to an early corpus of ancient Chinese. The richness of its verb content makes it a very valuable resource for Chinese lexical history. Wu’s project focuses on investigating all Chinese verbs and their corresponding examples in Chinese bronze inscriptions to explore the origins of common verbs dating back to the period of oracle bone script.
The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 410, Jan.20, 2013
Translated by Zhang Mengying