A Study On The Origin And Development Of Pictophonetic Characters In Shuo Wen Jie Zi

ShuoWenJieZi (shorten as ShuoWen in the following part) is the first literal book in China written by Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It has very important value in philology, phonology, exegetics and lexicography, etc,. There are 9431 Seal script characters in this book, of which more than eighty percent are homophone characters. The homophone system in ShuoWen is the very demonstration of the development of homophone system till the Han Dynasty:experts on philology use it to identify the unearthed archaic characters and establish theories on homophones in archaic characters; experts on phonology use it to study ancient Chinese pronunciations; experts on exegetics use it explore etymon. Great achievement has been fulfilled on homophone characters with the help of ShuoWen, however, few people have set foot on systematic research of the origin and development of homophone system. By choosing the research subject of origin of homophones in ShuoWen, we aim to explore the evolutive patterns of homophone system in the development of Chinese characters, explore dynamic changes of homophone system in ShuoWen from a diachronic perspective, find out the complex situations existed in the formation of homophone system in ShuoWen, and provide useful references for further study on homophone characters in ShuoWen.Based on the studies of philology, phonology and exegetics in recent years, we have explored the dynamic changes of homophone system in ShuoWen from aspects of font evolution, origin of phonetic complement, historical communication and different relations between different homophone characters in a series by taking the Da Xu version of ShuoWen as our research object. As a computer aided research, we have made an electronic text of ShuoWen and established a dynamic system of homophone characters in ShuoWen, byimputing relavant research results to the database which we have established, we have made a homophones query software for studying homophone characters in ShuoWen from different angles.The thesis consists of eight chapters. Chapter One introduces basic information, such as research subject selection, research vale, literary materials, theory evidence, research method and previous literature. Chapter Two gives an introduction to homophone characters and homophone character rules. Chapter Three discusses data processing. Chapter Four are about dynamic changes of homophone system in ShuoWen in terms of font evolution. In this chapter, mistakes of homophones in ShuoWen caused by various reasons are discussed. Reliability of homophone materials in ShuoWen is also investigated. Chapter Five discusses dynamic changes of homophone system in ShuoWen from the aspect of the formation of phonetic complement. Chapter Six investigates the formation time of homophone characters in ShuoWen. Chapter Seven makes an dynamic investigation of relations between homophone characters of a series in ShuoWen. Chapter Eight makes a conclusion of main research results in this paper.There are some innovative findings in this paper based on the previous studies:First, a comprehensive and detailed demonstration of the influence of font evolution of Chinese characters on homophonesystem for the first time with the help of unearthed material of archaic characters and previous research findings on archaic characters. Problems existing in homophone character materials in ShuoWen are pointed out.Second, different origins of phonetic complement in ShuoWen are explored in an all round manner for the first time, special attention has been paid to the influence of font on phonetic complement in ShuoWen.Third, historical communication of homophone characters in ShuoWen and formation of phonetic complement in ShuoWen have been explored systematically for the first time.Fourth, differentiation and combination of homophone series in ShuoWen have been studied for the first time, dynamic changes of different compliment characters before and after being grouped into their own homophone series.According to the diachronic research of homophone system in ShuoWen, it is found out that:From the perspective of font, there are about 100 characters whose phonetic complement changed because of the font, although the influence of font evolution of archaic characters on phonetic complement in homophone system is limited. However, there are about more the 600 wrong homophone character, which are distributed in almost 200 harmonious Character series, mixing with the right homophone characters, in the existing ShuoWen by various reasons. That is to say, although error rate is not high, the distribution is rather scatted.In terms of formation, for the whole homophone system in ShuoWen, origins of phonetic complement are very complicated; for a single homophone series, phonetic complement of some homophone series has more than one origin.As regards amount, most of the homophone characters in ShuoWen were appeared after the Spring and Autumn Annals, but more than half of the phonetic complement in ShuoWen have already existed in the Shang Dynasty. Never has the situation appeared again later that characters are largely chosen as phonetic complement like that in the Shang Dynasty.In terms of relationship, differentiation of characters of same origin has an oblivious influence on homophone system in ShuoWen. About one thirds of the homophone characters in ShuoWen have a direct or indirect relation with differentiation. In contrast, combination is rear, but importance should be attached to it, because it can make the inner relations of homophone characters in the same series more complicated.