An Introduction Of The Structure In Chinese Pictophonetic Characters

Content:This thesis tries to analysis the structure of meaning-symbols and the phonetic-symbols in the Chinese pictophonetic characters, with the theory of the Chinese contraditional philology , the modern comparative philology and cognitive languistics. There comes some regularities which will help us to understand deeply the Chinese pictophonetic characters, and to improve the methods of teaching, simplyfing and standardizing the Chinese characters.Pictophonetic characters, which are constructed with the phonetic-symbols and the meaning- symbols, are the main parts of the Chinese characters. As the product of the categorization to the things in the world of ancient Chinese people, the meaning- symbols were the basic level categories. The phonetic- symbols oringinated from the partly using of the pronunciation of ancient ideographs, then that the idea of using it was wildly accepted by the people with the consciousness of pronuciation by the phonetic loaning of ancient characters. Since the meaning- symbols taken shape, it became the tools categorizing the Chinese characters, and taking the leading role in the structure of the pictophonetic characters. Zhuanzhu, one of the theory of Liushu, is the way of categorizing that made the Chinese characters a well-orgnized symbolic system. In the process of the combination of the meaning- symbols and the phonetic-symbols, some strokes of the symbols were omitted to simplify or beautify the form of characters, which was called Shengsheng or Shengxing by Shuowenjiezi. It is a very advantageous way to creat a character by combinating a meaning-symbol and a phonetic-symbol, because it can show not only the meaning but also the pronuciation of the character. Consequently, the Chinese characters will exist permanently in this planet.