The Study On The Phonetic Loan Characters Of The Inscriptions On Bones And Tortoise Shells

Based on the Oracle Bone Dictionary as the main research material,this paper uses the theory of Chinese characters to explore the phenomenon of the phonetic loan characters of the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells,and then explore the role of the phonetic loan characters in the development of Chinese characters,and summarizes why the Chinese characters did not become the characters which mainly expresses their meaning by sound at last.The paper is divided into five parts:The introduction part briefly introduces the research process of the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells and the related research of "six categories",and expounds the research status,research purpose,significance and research methods of this topic.The first chapter expounds the reason and function of the phonetic loan characters and the concept of the phonetic loan characters adopted in this paper.On this basis,the phenomenon of the phonetic loan characters in Oracle dictionary is systematically investigated.A total of 1028 Chinese characters have been read in the Oracle Bone Dictionary,and with reference to other Oracle Bone Dictionary,a list of Chinese characters has been made according to the five items of "sequence number","character forms","official script","six categories" and "meaning".The inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells have been classified into four categories: pictographic characters,self-explanatory,associative compounds characters and pictophonetic characters.The statistical results show that the most pictographic characters are about 38% of the total,self-explanatory,associative compounds characters and pictophonetic characters are about 4%,34% and 23% of the total.Among the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells that have been read,there are about 772 the phonetic loan characters,accounting for 75% of the characters that have been read,while there are 473 purely the phonetic loan characters,accounting for 46%.On the basis of the phonetic loan characters,there are 192 words that promote differentiation in later generations,accounting for 19% of the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells and 25% of the phonetic loan characters.There are a lot of phonetic loan characters in ancient Chinese characters,which are mainly used to record the names of various places,people’s names and other specific things,as well as the words that are difficult to form words according to their meanings,which reflects the limitations of the pictographic characters.The use of a large number of the phonetic loan charactersmeets satisfied the needs of the ancestors to record the language.The second chapter introduces the limitations of phonetic loan characters and the evolution from phonetic loan characters to pictophonetic characters.The overflow of the phonetic loancharacters has resulted in the confusion of one chinese character has many meanings.In order to eliminate the disambiguation and seek the difference,the ancestors then added the symbol of meaning or the symbols of sound on the phonetic loan characters to become pictophonetic characters,or they are the perfect combination of sound,form and meaning.The use of pictophonetic characters has greatly improved the clarity of written record language,which is a very important step in the formation of Chinese character system.Pictophonetic characters are mainly caused by the confusion of meaning understanding caused by the extensive use of phonetic loan characters.Because pictophonetic characters can express their meaning and are suitable for recording Chinese,pictophonetic characters have developed rapidly and occupy a large proportion in Chinese characters.Among them,pictophonetic characters differentiated due to ideographic characters being annotated or changed the symbol of meaning.The increasing proportion of pictophonetic characters is the inevitable result of the development of Chinese characters.The pictophonetic characters are not purely expresses sound,not phonetic characters,but the characters developed by using the method of sound.The third chapter introduces the Enlightenment of the phonetic loan characters to Chinese character collation and standardization,and expounds the reason,object and method of Chinese character collation and standardization.The development of pictophonetic characters is promoted by phonetic loan characters,and the number of Chinese characters is unlimited,which is inconvenient for people to learn and master.Therefore,it is necessary to reduce the number of Chinese characters,standardize the shape and simplify the strokes.However,most of the new characters produced by the use of phonetic loan characters Therefore,the merging of Chinese characters starts from these new characters.The conclusion part summarizes the achievements and shortcoming of this paper.For example,it is still difficult to judge some the phonetic loan characters,further study on the development of pictophonetic characters promoted by phonetic loan characters,etc.These problems need to be further improved in the future.This paper not only studies the phenomenon of phonetic loan characters of Oracle Bone dictionary in synchronic plane,but also studies the influence of phonetic loan characters on the development of Chinese characters.It not only summarizes the function of phonetic loan characters in the history of Chinese characters,but also analyzes it from the microcosmic point of view so as to make the conclusion reliable.