Abstract:

Annotations have always been a key issue in processing a Chinese historical corpus. There are various and complicated types of annotations shown in Chinese texts in the past dynasties, which has to do with the classical Chinese academic tradition and its forms. The annotation types of different times are an organic part of the rich materials of Chinese language history, as well as a basic subject to be examined and analyzed in the typology of a Chinese language historical corpus. The formalized marks of the basic content of different types of notes are called “annotations”. The contents of the annotations and the terms used for “annotation” in the past dynasties shared a roughly agreed form of “regulating the past by the present”. The form of these annotations constitutes an important category with a unified standard when processing annotations in a corpus of Chinese character history today. Shiji （The Historical Records） is a model sample of a Chinese language historical corpus, and the notes in its various versions in the past dynasties show the interpretation and understanding of important scholars in different periods. By examining and comparing the age of the usage of some certain characters and terms and the intermediary relations among them as well as the phonetic differentiation in Chinese language history, we can restore their internal relations, reveal the latent clues, and identify the annotations that truly match the attributes of the corresponding era. This kind of annotation processing is of chronological significance and has the reference value for judging the approximate age of an inherited text.

Key words: Shiji, Slips of the Qin and Han Dynasties, age, annotation