Semantic Analyses of Three Lexical Items Meaning “Plagiarism” in The Database of Chinese Classic Ancient Books—A Historical Linguistic Perspective

Abstract

<p>Outsiders tend to associate plagiarism in the Chinese society with “Chinese culture”, with the underlying assumption being that plagiarism is a traditionally accepted cultural phenomenon. It is generally not realised that condemnation of plagiarism can in fact be traced back to as early as the pre-Qin times in Chinese history. We believe insights can be drawn from classical Chinese texts to inform the contemporary endeavours of fostering academic standardisation. In the study reported in this paper, we aim to provide systematic historical linguistic evidence for the consistent criticism of plagiarism in Chinese history. The complete concordances of three lexical items, “抄袭” (chāo xí), “剿(勦)袭” (chāo xí), and “剽窃” (piāo qiè), in<em> </em><em>The Database of Chinese Basic Ancient Books</em>, were used as the dataset for analyses. Traditional exegetic and modern semantic methods were combined to summarise dictionary meanings and contextual meanings of the three lexical items into categories, with diachronic perspectives incorporated. A total of 2725 instances of these lexical items were found to express the meaning of “stealing others’ words as one’s own,” subsuming 147 instances of “抄袭” (chāo xí), 988 instances of “剿(勦)袭” (chāo xí), and 1590 instances of “剽窃” (piāo qiè). Our study addresses a new research topic in mixing traditional and modern linguistic methods and demonstrates that methodologies of historical linguistics can have promising contemporary cross-disciplinary applications.<br></p>

外界往往把当代中国社会存在的抄袭现象与“中国文化”联系起来，认为抄袭是传统上在一定程度上被接受的一种文化现象。然而事实上，在中国历史上对抄袭、剽窃行为的谴责和鞭挞可以追溯至上古。文章认为，在当今学术规范建设的事业中，有必要从传统典籍中汲取营养。文章报告的研究之目的在于对抄袭、剽窃在中国历史上一以贯之地受到批判这一事实提供系统而明确的历史语言学证据。文章以《中国基本古籍库》里的相关检索行为语料，结合传统训诂学方法和现代语义学方法，分析了“抄袭”、“剿(勦) chāo袭”及“剽窃”这三个词项从上古到晚近的义项，归纳出各自上下文语境义的类别。结果发现，这三个词项在《古籍库》中，共有2725例(即总和147例“抄袭”、988例“剿(勦) chāo袭”与1590例“剽窃”)表达“窃取他人的语言文字成果据为己有”这一义项。本研究既有训诂学、语义学的研究角度，也有借古鉴今的历史语言学的角度。