Methods of fixing and circulating precedent names in Chinese cultural space

Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Department of Languages of East and Southeast Asia, researcher, candidate of Philological Sciences, bld. 1, Bolshoi Kislovsky Pereulok 1, 125009, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author: voropaev@vokitai.ru

Abstract

The paper presents some results of the study of precedent names of a Chinese cultural space and describes the main methods of fixing and circulating precedent names (PN) in a modern Chinese discourse. According to the author, the main ways include epithets-invariants of the perception of referents of precedent names in dictionaries and textbooks, and, therefore, in the minds of the Chinese who went to school; special dictionaries and collections with images of PN referents (more often these are historical personalities) and very brief encyclopedic information about them; adapted chapters from precedent texts with headings in the form of precedent names-eventonyms in books for children and teenagers; phraseological units and set expressions of Chinese language of all types which are connected with the precedent phenomena; frame works; precedent names, precedent texts. The author believes that epithets represented by phraseological units, phraseological units as such, name variants and precedent texts can be attributed to primary basic methods. These methods show the specifics of the Chinese cultural space and serve the basis for PN preservation, fixation and translation. Special dictionaries and collections, adapted texts of chapters from classic novels with names in the form of PN eventonyms and frame works are secondary derived methods and tools that demonstrate the great demand of the Chinese linguistic and cultural community for precedent names and are based on language-saved knowledge of PN and other precedent phenomena.