caa a22 4500 38639749X CHVBK 20180307112143.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130s1989 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0362502800002613 doi S0362502800002613 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0362502800002613 Nivison David S. Asian Languages Department Stanford University Stanford, California The "Question” Question* [Elektronische Daten] [David S. Nivison] When we read Shang oracle-bone inscriptions, we should distinguish between what the diviner is saying (in the "charge,” mingci) and what he is doing in the whole divination rite. What he is doing is not always seeking information; and even when he is doing this, what he says is usually not a question. This paper offers various arguments and examples to show this. For example, Li Xueqin's research proves that the oracle language possessed grammatical forms, such as final particles and final negatives, for marking a sentence as a question. Therefore, the first assumption should be that when a diviner does not use these forms, he does not intend a sentence to be understood as a question. And when two sentences in the same inscription — e.g., the charge and the prognostication — are alike in form (both of them being without final negatives or interrogative particles), it is a mistake to construe one of them as a question and the other as a statement. Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1989 Early China Cambridge University Press 14(1989), 115-125 0362-5028 14<115 1989 14 EAC https://doi.org/10.1017/S0362502800002613 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0362502800002613 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Nivison David S. Asian Languages Department Stanford University Stanford, California NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Early China Cambridge University Press 14(1989), 115-125 0362-5028 14<115 1989 14 EAC CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge