Some Ancient Chinese text structuring devices

Abstract: The description of sound correlated figures of speech in early Chinese prose texts — where it was attempted since Jiāng Yŏugàos (d. 1851) trailblaizing Xiān-Qín yùndòu 先秦韻讀 [Pre-Qin rhyme segmentations] at all — typically referred to phrase- or sentence-internal reference entities, or, at best, to cola sequences which were subject to relatively strict conditions of adjacency and/or parallelism. Longer textual units, like the zhāng 章- “section” , piān 篇-“chapter”, or even a text as a whole, were neither scrutinized with regard to their use of aurally effective (phonological and morphological) devices within the tradition of Chinese “word arrangement learning” (xiūcíxué 修辭學), nor in the very few modern Western studies which have approached the problem, typically under the influence of modern systematicizations of classical Grek and Latin rhetoric. After a short initial discussion, considering typological and areal parallels of Old Chinese, I will argue in favour of the validity of approaching early Chinese texts in reconstructed phonologies, rather then exculsively through the intricate veil of its written representation in a logographic writing system. In passing, my talk will try to trace the origins of sound-correlated figures of speech since the earliest Chinese inscriptions, sketching the development of reduplicated and rhyming compounds in bronze inscriptions and the Book of Odes. It will then exemplify four repeatedly encountered text structuring devices in self-conscious Warring States-Han philosophical prose (Hánfēizĭ 韓非子, Lüshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋, Báihŭtōng 白虎通 etc.), which, for lack of an established terminology, will be called “rhyme nets”, “assonance chains”, “paronomastic cadences”, and “root symmetries”. Finally, the interest of a description of such devices within Chinese and cross-linguistically for typologies of literary form and iconicity will be discussed. It will be argued, that especially a careful study of figura etymologica might yield valuable insights into the awareness of linguistic structure of the early Chinese speaker, as well as into more pragmatic areas, such as the anthropology of name-giving and -tabooing or performative usages of speech in ritual context