Description of grammatical meaning with the help of significant one in «Zhu Zi Bian Lüe»

There are no completely grammatical studies in Chinese scholarly tradition prior to 1898. Mainly commentary orientation of linguistic works and the general tendency towards the lexicographic form of presentation of philological researches determined function words’ dictionaries to be the leading way of describing linguistic phenomena in the field of grammar. Turning to treatises of this kind contributes to the study of linguistic traditions’ generation and grammatical researches’ formation in China. Special attention is paid to the description of grammatical meanings’ development from lexical one’s and to method of exegesis based on such description, used in《助字辨略》 «Zhu Zi Bian Lüe» (1711) by 刘淇 LiuQi. The structure of the dictionary entries of this work was analyzed, as well as the interpretations in which LiuQi refers to the significant meanings of the described units. Examples of dictionary entries are given, or excerpts from them, provided with translations into Russian. The analysis of the material showed that dictionary entries can vary significantly in length, their internal structure is also not the same, however, in general, it includes an explanation of the meaning of the described unit (from authoritative sources such as 《尔雅》 «Erya», 《广韵》 «Guangyun» and/or a comment made by the author of «Zhu Zi Bian Lüe») and illustrative material from classical works (such as 《论语》 «Lun yu», 《大学》 «Da xue», 《中庸》 «Zhong yong», 《孟子》 «Mencius», 《诗经》 «Shi jing», 《汉书》 «Han shu», etc.). In a number of dictionary entries, LiuQi demonstrates the mechanism of grammatical meanings’ development from the significant one, emphasizing that the grammatical meaning is determined by the significant meaning and is closely connected with it.