EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 16 Adamski Susanne (University of Bonn) Looking for “Slaves”: A Preliminary Analysis of Selected Nouns inWestern Zhou Bronze Inscriptions Key words: slaves, pu 僕 , renli 人鬲 , bronze inscriptions, Western Zhou society As Robert Gassmann (2000) has criticized, “many basic terms” which designate social groups in ancient Chinese society “are still imperfectly understood” and “have seldom been questioned”. This still holds true for some words inWestern Zhou bronze inscriptions that havemore or less often been interpreted from the viewpoint of later texts and therefore different societal circumstances. Both in China and the West, scholars generally assume the existence of slaves during the earliest stages of Chinese history. Whereas for the Shang period, slavery as an economically significant institution has been recently questioned by David Keightley (2012), several words inWestern Zhou bronze inscriptions have been identified as referring to a class of “slaves” (e.g. pu 僕 ; renli 人鬲 ). Nonetheless, there is no real consensus on the meaning of these particular terms.According to the inscriptions, people have been given as a “present”, sold, dislocated and/or placed under the authority of others; their designations, statuses and/or functions, however, seem to differ to a considerable degree, includ- ing nobility. Within this context, the present paper intends to systematically examine the semantic scope of selected nouns designating certain groups of people, exploring the question whether they may or may not be classified as “slaves” in recent definitions of the term. The aim is to hopefully achieve a better understanding of these designations, thus shedding some more light on certain aspects of Western Zhou society. Alexiev Alexander (Sofia University) Popular Puns in Chinese Folk Rhymes Key words: Pun, punning, Chinese folk rhymes China's traditional folk rhymes ( 民谣 ) abound in puns ( 谐音双关语 ). The latter are among the most widespread figures of rhetoric in this genre. Ability to decode such expressions is essential for understand- ing and appreciation of Chinese folk songs, which are full of sentiment and demonstrate strong national temperament and vivid colors. The article takes a look at some of the puns in popular folk rhymes, many of which have become fixed and symbolic in character. Antonyan Ksenia (Institute of Linguistics RAS) The Semantic Field ‘Calm’ ( 安 ) in Chinese Key words: emotional states, semantic field ‘calm’ The paper discusses the principles of reconstruction of semantic fields of emotional states in Chinese and reconstructs the semantic field 安 [an] ‘calm’ in Chinese. Lexical units belonging to this field play an important role in Chinese philosophy and Chinese culture in general. The typological characteristics of Modern Chinese imply the fact that the paradigmatic relations of the elements of the field are represented in their syntagmatic relations, namely, in compounds and phraseologi- cal units ( 成语 [chengyu]).