A Study On The Chinese Homographs In Modern Times

Homograph means the Chinese character of different words. There is no derivation relation among them. When Chinese character is coined, homograph is created. Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, scholars have noticed the existence of homograph. Take the ancient dictionaries such as Shuowen and Guangyun for example, there are a great number of homographs in them. Modern scholars have achieved a lot in the field of collecting, examining and correcting even theory construction for homograph. However, we still need some improvements, such as attaching importance to the modern periods, strengthening theory research, supplementing and correcting the individual cases. Homograph is crucial for language research, collation of ancient books and lexicography. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the studying of Chinese homograph in modern times.This dissertation is a comprehensive studying of Chinese homograph in modern times. First, I make a clear statement of the definition and the scope for homograph studying. The derivational homographs, the transcription words and the false characters are excluded from homograph. Second, based on the previous achievements and shortcomings, I review the history of the homograph studying and demonstrate the necessity and urgency for the studying of Chinese homograph in modern times. Third, on the foundation of probing the researching materials and contents, I point out that we should have a complete investigation of corpus and notice the identification of corpus and the checking against the authoritative text. And I state that the case study should be carried out in line with distinguishing different words, tracing the origins, exploring new meanings and differentiating pseudo-meanings. Then I analyze the homograph generation pathway via four aspects, which are coining, borrowing, correcting and confounding. I further investigate the features of homograph in times, regions, classes and frequencies. And I unfold three influences caused by homograph: limiting Chinese character into an acceptable number, causing the confusion in understanding and accelerating the decomposition of Chinese character. At last, by exemplification, I demonstrate the importance of homograph research from five aspects, which are character, lexicon, phonology, grammar and dialect. I make a conclusion on the issue of the importance of homograph to language research. In accordance with the procedure of collation of ancient books, this dissertation discusses the important value of homograph in the field of collation of ancient books through compiling texts, correcting false characters, distinguishing variations and making annotations. This dissertation also discusses the importance of homograph to lexicography through supplementing the missing contents, making amends and discriminating falsehood.