Probe into the Origin of Personal Pronoun “朕” (zhèn)

Abstract

在汉语中，“朕”是一个很特殊的人称代 词，从秦始皇开始，在中国漫长的两千年帝国 史中，其一直作为皇帝的特权代词而存在着。 本研究旨在探讨两千年前始皇帝确定“朕”自 称的原因以及“朕”字的特别含义和作用。通 过对甲骨文中“朕”字的使用情况进行分析， 结合近年来上古汉语重构的研究成果，研究发 现“朕”字所代表的并不是一种第一人称代 词的形式，而是两种：一种为第一人称单数领 格，另一种为第一人单数的对比性强调形式。 在此基础上，本文尝试提出了两个后缀*/ɯ/ 和*/m/。 In Chinese, “朕” (zhèn) is a very special personal pronoun. Since the First Emperor of Qín, in the long history of two thousand years in China, it has always existed as the privilege pronoun of the emperor. So, why two thousand years ago, before the emperor to set the word, but not other words? The word “朕” has any special meaning and role? This article attempts to analyze the use of the Chinese characters in Oracle and concludes the results of the reconstructions of Old Chinese in recent years. This article attempts to analyze the use of the Chinese characters in Oracle and concludes the results of the reconstructions of Old Chinese in recent years. It is preliminarily thought that the character “朕” represented by the Chinese characters are not just the forms of first-person pronouns, but two: one for the first person pronouns are qualified, the other for the first-person pronouns contrastive form. At the same time, we try to propose two suffixes */ɯ/ and */m/.