A Study On Sign Characters Of Modern Chinese Characters

The form of Chinese characters has been in changing, which has developed for a long history of three thousand years from oracle bone inscriptions and inscriptions on bronze in Shang dynasty up to now. The form of Chinese characters has experienced together with simplification and complication. But when the form of Chinese characters developed into modern time, simplification becomes the mainstream of the form evolution. The requirement of simplification make the form of Chinese characters adjust its internal structure continuously, so some words have lost the function of expressing meaning and pronunciation and gradually form a group of signal words and half signal words. These signal words and half signal words were analyzed out from modern Chinese character from the angle of method of configuration. This theory is a innovation of the view about the structure of Chinese characters. And the traditional Liu Shu theory is a revolution undoubtedly that the analysis of Chinese characters do not use methods of hieroglyphic, indication, association and phonetic any more. Under the signifying theory, with the development and change of Chinese characters, its nature has changed gradually and the trend of signifying is more and more obvious. Signal words and half signal words together with associative compounds characters and pictograph characters common as the main structure type.Nearly one-third commonly-used modern Chinese characters are signal words and half-signal words, their emergence and development is a diachronic process. This paper discusses the process of formation and development of modern signal words and half-signal words from the diachronic point of view. The modern characters developed along with the signifying process. Signal characters develop from simple strokes to the signal words which were created according to shape, sound and meaning. After the founding of new China, lots of signal words and half-signal words were emerged from a series of word reform movement. This signifying process lasted for thousands of years, it generated gradually in the ongoing development of character. In addition, the article also made a synchronic comparison, affirmed the existing state in modern Chinese characters and the trend of signifying in the comparative analysis of associative characters and pictophmetic characters.Although the theory of signal words didn't cause adequate understanding at now and the corresponding theoretical research is relatively limited. This paper just based on the point, use the signal words and signal-half words of modern Chinese characters as the research object, analyze signal words'theoretical basis, historical evolution, current station, usage and other aspects. The theories research of signal words and signal-half words are useful to clearly understand the status of signal words, correctly analyze the nature of modern Chinese characters and benefit to the lecture of signal words in Chinese language teaching.This thesis is mainly divided into three parts. First part introduced the basic situation of common signal words, including the related background knowledge, the concept of sign, signal words, and signifying, and the types and sources of signal words. Second part presented the objective reasons of signal words and half-signal words'formation, and described the formation and development process of signal words. This was a process whose outline was history. It recounted how the signal words in modern Chinese characters evolved in several major character changes, such as the large number of signal words after script changes and the signal words and half-signal words generated for clearing up modern character after the founding of new China. Third part describes the actual use station of signal words. It elaborated some questions in signal words'use specifically, such as we can't analyze the roots from the perspective of configuration, the nature will change when sign is used for radical side, there are disputes in quantitative analysis and some questions in the teaching process of Chinese. And at the end of the article, it made a brief description of signal words'advantages and disadvantages.In short, the research of signal words and half-signal words is important for the judgment of modern Chinese characters, the arrangement and reform of future character and Chinese language teaching.