Preliminary Study Of Nom Characters' Developing Process

Nom Characters (Demotic script), which are created upon Chinese character (Han script) materials and building methods (including phonograms, guise borrowing, mixed meaning etc.), is considered as the character of the Vietnamese people based on the official utilization of Chinese characters to accurately record Vietnamese phonetics and phonology. As a Vietnamese student who is pursuing a master's degree in Chinese Linguistics and Phonology in China, I have taken interest in the history development of Nom Character and I chose this as my main research direction. Using relevant Nom Character materials including historical facts, events and ancient famous works is to clarify the formation and development of Nom characters.In this paper, a comprehensive quantitative statistics and static description methodology has been used to carry out a thorough and systematic investigation and objective description on historical facts and events, and Nom-written famous works. Then, based on an objective description, the author tries to undertake an appropriate analysis of appearance, characteristics and causes of Nom character at its different periods of development. I hope that characteristics and causes of Nom character authentically reflect the whole image of Nom character during its development process, and to provide a valuable source of materials to the philosophy theories. At the same time, the findings of this paper useful reference for editing, studying ancinent Nom books and compiling Nom dictionaries. This paper helps to make contribution to the exchange between China and Vietnam, especially researching on the Chinese and Vietnamese culture and literature.This paper consists of the intrucduction and five chapters including the main points as followsIntroduction. Focusing on the introduction of topic significance and objectives, Nom characters current research, research scope, material collection and research methodology.Chapter 1. A summary of Nom characters. Mainly introduce the history of using characters in Vietnam and discussing Nom characters'relevant naming issues and its basic characteristics.Chapter 2. The formation of Nom characters. This chapter firstly introduces Nom character forming conditions, time and evidences, then, makes a classification of Nom characters with examples based on its structure.Chapter 3. Nom characters and their internal development process. This chapter develops in 2 dimensions:One is to study the progress of Nom character on its unit meaning, and the other is to study the progress of Nom character on its systematic meaning.Chapter 4. The development and decline of Nom characters from the respect of Nom-writings. In terms of benefits and influence of Nom characters on society, in this chapter, the development process of Nom characters is divided into 4 periods:the beginning period of Nom characters—from Ly Dynasty to Tran, Ho Dynasty (12-14th century); the development period of Nom character—the later Le Dynasty (15-18th century); the peak period of Nom character—the later Le Dynasty to Nguyen Dynasty (18-19th century); the decline period (last half of 19th century to beginning of 20th century).Chapter 5. A brief discussion of position of Nom characters in Vietnam's culture and society. This chapter focuses on the impacts of Nom characters on different aspects of Vietnam's traditional culture, including fork culture, religion and faith, art and literature, as well as the current preservation and using status; then suggesting some personal ideas about on the protection and utilizing Nom characters.