Approaches Used to Recognise and Decipher Ancient Inscriptions: A Review

Inscriptions play a vital role in historical studies. In order to boost tourism and academic necessities, archaeological experts, epigraphers and researchers recognised and deciphered a great number of inscriptions using numerous approaches. Due to the technological revolution and inefficiencies of manual methods, humans tend to use automated systems. Hence, computational archaeology plays an important role in the current era. Even though different types of research are conducted in this domain, it still poses a big challenge and needs more accurate and efficient methods. This paper presents a review of manual and computational approaches used to recognise and decipher ancient inscriptions.Keywords: ancient inscriptions, computational archaeology, decipher, script

Reconstruction of Uncertain Historical Evolution of the Polysyllablization of Chinese Lexis

Polysyllablization, closely related to phonetics, semantics, and syntactics, is one of the fundamental trends in the development of Chinese lexis. However, with lots of uncertainties in the historical evolution of Chinese language, the quantitative modeling and reconstruction of polysyllablization remain open questions. Based on the Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Words, a mapping from the words to their time of occurrence is built. With the inverse mapping on random samples, the newly produced words with different numbers of syllables in different time periods are obtained. Finally the total quadratic variation minimization model is adopted to estimate the trend of polysyllablization. As a novel exploration in the computational linguistics, the results agree with the stage division of historical Chinese and answer some difficult questions related to polysyllablization in a quantitative manner

The sky rained with millet and the ghosts wailed in the night: An anthropological study of Chinese calligraphy.

This thesis accounts for the social power of calligraphy in China. It begins by examining the phenomena of widespread public calligraphy and inscription. I investigate three dimensions of Chinese calligraphy - as written characters, as handwriting and as an art form. I examine both the popular view of writing, and the theological view of calligraphic experts. The main points of my argument are: 1. Handwriting is considered an extension of the body-person (shen), which makes it a suitable candidate for the Chinese love of reading 'signs' from bodily forms. As a result, handwriting is treated as revelatory of the inner self. 2. The process of learning calligraphy as a 'technique of the body' constitutes an important element in Chinese embodiment. The techniques of the brush create the type of body-person that is classified as a literati. 3. One key chapter in the dissertation focuses on Bloch's criticism of Goody's 'literacy thesis' - that better means of writing transmit knowledge more effectively. To show the fallacy of Goody's assumption, Bloch resorts to the common view of ideograms - Chinese written characters are the repository of knowledge, rather than a mere means of communication. However, analysis of material from the fields of linguistics and the modern Chinese script reform shows that Bloch's assumption is a myth. Notwithstanding, it is a myth embraced by the Chinese themselves. In this folk understanding, written characters are indeed believed to contain in themselves profound information. 4. To disenchant Chinese calligraphy, the relationship between writing techniques and magic is analysed. This explains the phenomenon of 'magical' writings by political leaders. Moreover, writing is also the way socio-political power speaks. This has undoubtedly helped to sustain calligraphy's halo. However, the power of calligraphy cannot be truly understood unless one sees calligraphy - a culturally enriched and empowered category of artefact/artwork - as an active social actor with agency of its own

A reevaluation of so-called passive constructions in ancient Chinese : from Pre-Qin to the Han dynasty

While there have been written many linguistic studies on the passive voice in Chinese, many aspects of this field of research have remained controversial, such as the emergence of various constructions, their exact syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features, as well as the question from which period onward we can talk about a “mature” passive (i.e., passive voice). Three main opinions are presented in current scholarship. Ma, in a pioneering work from 1898 (reprinted in 2007: 160), defined the Chinese passive construction as a construction with “a patient appearing in the subject position” without clearly defining the “subject” or discussing the construction (外动字之行，有施有受。受者居宾次，常也。如受者居主次，则为受动字，明其以受者为主也。). Much later, Gao 1949 (reprinted in 2011: 226-227) argued that none of the explanations that have been provided in scholarship so far validated the assumption that the constructions could be treated similarly to the passive voice found in many western languages (汉语具有动词功能的词，实在并没有施动和受动的分别), while other recent studies have labeled the Chinese structures that had overt syntactic markers as passive structures. In order to contribute to this fundamental and long-lasting scholarly debate, this comprehensive study provides a review of the diachronic development of the so-called Chinese passive from the pre-Qin era to the end of the Han dynasty. Part 1 reviews the studies of passive in Chinese and also introduces the definition of passive in a cross-linguistic perspective. Especially, some relevant terminology, in particular, “passive sense”, “passive voice”, “passive function” and “passive construction”, are distinguished in order to better understand the passive in Ancient Chinese. Meanwhile, three important factors that could trigger a passive interpretation in Ancient Chinese are introduced as a general background of this dissertation. Part 2 examines two types of notional passive (i.e., PV construction) in Ancient Chinese, i.e., Type 1 and Type 2. It is found that most notional passives were in fact the intransitive use of labile verbs (i.e., Type 1) that could only be interpreted as a passive depending on the context. Meanwhile, in some special contexts, a few verbs with strong transitive features are also found in the notional passive construction (i.e., Type 2), which is rarely observed cross-linguistically. Type 2 should be understood as a special situation of Type 1 in which the event expressed by the verb is not likely to occur spontaneously. Part 3 focuses on the diachronic development of the four lexical items traditionally regarded as “passive markers”: jian见, bei 被, wei 为and yu于, and concludes that all are ambiguous for both passive and non-passive interpretations, since a passive interpretation is determined by the context rather than by these markers themselves, which were also used in active sentences and could also be assembled to constitute new structures and variations. Therefore, it was concluded that there was no consistent syntactic marker that specifically expressed the passive voice in Ancient Chinese. Part 4 examines whether the ke construction was a passive construction in Archaic Chinese by reviewing the formation of the ke (and ke yi) constructions, as well as the nan (yi), yi (yi) and zu (yi) constructions. It was concluded that these were more likely to be interpreted as serial verb constructions with deontic modality and a generic reading with middle characteristics that possibly also expressed a passive meaning. However, it was concluded that ke, nan, yi and zu could not justifiably be defined as passive markers. Part 5 concludes that in Chinese it is important to differentiate between the passive voice and a passive sense. From a translation perspective, some so-called passive structures were found to express passive meanings and were translated as such into English and other languages. However, as the passive meaning appeared to be pragmatically rather than syntactically determined, none of the alleged passives in Ancient Chinese can be qualified as passive voice in accordance with a syntactic definition of passive. In general, the degree of grammaticalization of the passive markers in Archaic Chinese was quite low and they are better explained from a functional grammar viewpoint rather than a transformational generative grammar perspective

The Materiality of Magic

The Materiality of Magic is an exciting new book about an aspect of magic that is usually neglected. In the last two decades we have had many books and proceedings of conferences on the concept of magic itself as well as its history, formulas and incantations in antiquity, both in East and West. Much less attention, however, has been paid to the material that was used by the magicians for their conjuring activities. This is the first book of its kind that focuses on the material aspects of magic, such as amulets, drawings, figurines, gems, grimoires, rings, and voodoo dolls. The practice of magic required a specialist expertise that knew how to handle material such as lead, gold, stones, papyrus and terra cotta – material that sometimes was used for specific genres of magic. That is why we present in this well illustrated collection of studies new insights on the materiality of magic in antiquity by studying both the materials used for magic as well as the books in which the expertise was preserved. The main focus of the book is on antiquity, but we complement and contrast our material with examples ranging from the Ancient Near East, via early modern Europe, to the present time

Scribal Culture and Intertextuality: Literary and Historical Relationships between Job and Deutero-Isaiah

This thesis examines a variety of scholarly arguments concerning the distinctive literary and historical relationship between the book of Job and the second part of the book of Isaiah, so-called Deutero-Isaiah. The general methodology in a comparative study between biblical texts has been the author-oriented approach which traces the complex interrelationships between corresponding texts, considering many verbal and thematic similarities, but this approach often arises from the misleading concepts of literary dependence from an early source to a later one. In this thesis, I argue that scribes were writers of biblical materials and belonged to a group of the literate élite in Israelite society, and that resemblances between the two books result from the production of a scribal culture in the Persian period.This view may shed a light on traditional researches influenced by form-criticism, which divides the literate groups in Israelite society into different professional groups—priests, sages, and prophets. The proposed approach of the scribal culture has also resulted in a different way of interpreting the association with ancient Near Eastern literature which is supposed to be closely related to the two books. Similarities with non-Israelite sources have been suggested by scholars as unequivocal evidence of literary dependence or influence, but a careful examination of those extra-biblical compositions possibly affirms that scribes would have a broad awareness of other ancient texts. Finally, shared ideas and interests between the two books do offer insights into the theological views of the scribes in the Persian period. We may see the historical development of scribal ideas by comparing the two books with other biblical texts and by confirming the diversity and discrepancy within them

デジタルデザイン教育における中国の伝統的パターン要素の統合発展に関する研究

Cultural dissemination and artistic heritage represent a highly concentrated database of information in the past, which depends not only on the expansion of emerging digital media but also on the transformation of language and knowledge. Digital design with traditional patterns as elements is a continuous process from creative generation, material selection, and model establishment. The whole process is done based on the digital design course. The author conducts research from three aspects: theoretical knowledge, course operation exercises and after-school questionnaires, which is a process of integrating technology and art. The purpose of this course is not to discover new theories or new technologies, but to provide morphological possibilities for cultural symbols under existing digital technologies. The purpose is to try to construct new ideas and innovative digital technologies for traditional Chinese patterns, to find Possible paths for the inheritance of new traditional culture.北九州市立大

Archaeological Site Conservation and Local Residents: Japanese Experience and its Application to China

13304甲第4709号博士（文学）金沢大学博士論文本文Ful

Contrasting beliefs with reality : the epistemology of branding and brand image in the small church

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/2568/thumbnail.jp