John Cikoski
John Stewart Cikoski is a sinologist and above all a specialist in classical Chinese .
biography
Cikoski studied with Robert N. Tharp and Parker Huang at the Institute of Far Eastern Languages (IFEL) at Yale University and continued studying Chinese with George Sing and Charles Semich in the US Air Force . His PhD supervisors were Hugh M. Stimson and Angus C. Graham . He taught at the Oriental Languages Department at the University of California, Berkeley and was co-editor of Early China magazine .
Cikoski is married to Mary E. Beckman , a professor of linguistics at Ohio State University .
research
Cikoski's 1970 dissertation was an important attempt to define the parts of speech in classical Chinese (or the language of Zuo zhuan ). In his Three Essays in Chinese Grammar 1978 he worked out some questions from his dissertation in more detail. For example, he divided verbs into “direct” (e.g. 毀 “destroy”) and “ergative” verbs (e.g. 滅 “destroy”).
Until the appearance of Cikoski's Introduction to Classical Chinese , there was no textbook of Classical Chinese that offered a systematic, didactic introduction to the grammar of the language and was not just a collection of commented texts. Cikoski's Notes for a Lexicon of Classical Chinese contain information on 24,000 Chinese headwords and go back to his studies since 1961. In 1979 he digitized his card box and since 1998 printed versions of his dictionary project have been circulating. His reconstructions of pronunciation refer primarily to Bernhard Karlgren's Archaic Chinese .
Cikoski sharply criticized the works of some prominent sinologists and translators of Chinese literature (especially Peter Boodberg and Paul Serruys ) and of sinology in general; He accuses them above all of the fact that some of them do not really master classical Chinese and that the methods of their studies do not meet scientific standards.
Works
- Classical Chinese Word Classes . Yale University Ph.D., 1970.
- On standards of analogic reasoning in the late Chou. In: Journal of Chinese Philosophy 2 (3) (1975) pp. 325-357.
- Introduction to Classical Chinese . Berkeley: Department of Oriental Languages, University of California, 1976.
- The passive voice was rather active in Classical Chinese. In: Early China 2 (1976).
- Confucius and the Chuen Chiou. In: Early China 2 (1976).
- Yuan Ku T'ung Yen . Department of Oriental Languages, University of California, 1976.
- A Reply to Mr. [Richard A.] Art. Early China 3 (1977): 71-73.
- Towards Canons of Philological Method for Analyzing Classical Chinese Texts. In: Early China 3 (1977), pp. 18-30.
- An Analysis of Some Idioms Commonly Called Passive in Classical Chinese. In: Computational Analyzes of Asian and African Languages 9 (1978), pp. 133-208.
- An Outline Sketch of Word-Classes and Sentence Structure in Classical Chinese. Computational Analyzes of Asian and African Language (1978) pp. 8-17.
- Notes for a Lexicon of Classical Chinese. Coprolite Press , 2008.
Web links
- John Cikoski: Notes for a Lexicon of Classical Chinese (2011 Version) (Warring States Project, University of Massachusetts at Amherst)
Footnotes
- ↑ Not ergative in the usual sense.
- ↑ Notes for a Lexicon Vol. 1, passim.
- ↑ cf. Richard A. Kunst: More on Xiu宿 and Wuxing五行, with an Addendum on the Use of Archaic Reconstructions. In: Early China 3 (1977), p. 67f.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cikoski, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cikoski, John Stewart (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Sinologist and specialist in classical Chinese |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 20th century |