A Study On Gujinzi(古今字)

As an essential part of 'Xunguxue'(训诂学), Gujinzi(古今字)represents the momentum of semantic development, it reflects those phenomena with great developmental laws, therefore many scholars have done some researches in this realm from the perspective of linguistic and semantic development since Qing(清) dynasty. During the decade of 1980s to 1990s, the relationship of 'Gujinzi(古今字) 'and 'tongjiazi (通假字)'was one of the focus in the field of ancient Chinese study once. The discussion lasted a long time, but consensus on the origin, nature and characteristics and the relationship between 'Gujinzi' and 'Tongjiazi' has not been reached. Therefore this paper discusses these disputable problems mainly on the base of previous researches. This paper composes an introduction and six chapters. The significance of this topic and theories of research and methods are the main content in this Introduction. Chapter one deals with the present researching situation on Gujinzi , including some brief reviews on certain points made by scholars of Qing dynasty and modern experts.Chapter two is one of the important components of this paper, deals with the definition, cause of formation, basic characteristics and the inner classification. This paper believes that the so called 'Gujinzi' originated either from those new characters branched from the amplification list of some original characters or from those new characters developed from the homomorphic characters which were borrowed because of the same pronunciations in the ancient time, with new images given to them after that. The ancient characters are the homomorphic characters while the modern ones are those new characters after division. The developmental movement of Chinese characters is the invisible root cause of the phenomena of 'Gujinzi '. During the process of Chinese characters' dynamic development, some characters left their original amplification list at a certain stage and others evolved into the new ones from those homomorphic characters, which both contributed to the development of new Chinese characters. The new characters take a look of phonogram, which results from the limitation of phonograms' regulations during the evolvement of Chinese characters. Here we can say the limitation of Chinese characters' mechanism is the visible and surface cause of the formation of Gujinzi . It is not scientific enough to explain the nature and characteristics of 'Gujinzi is the result of the mutual influence between Chinese characters and its dialectic development. We believe that the basic characteristic of 'Gujnzi s' is the new characters' formation and the division of Chinese characters. So the view that 'Gujinzi is the phenomenon of diachronic homoword-isocharacter should be questioned. According to causes trigged the division of Chinese characters, this paper classified 'Gujinzi ' into two categories: those new characters left the original character during its development with a new image, and those developed from homomorphic characters because of the need of accuracy.Chapter three is also an important component of this paper, it deals with the differentiation of 'Gujinzi ' and Tongjiazi mainly,. We give Tongjiazi a definition first, that is a phenomenon existed in ancient Chinese, when it comes to a certain character, the specific character is not used but another one with a same or similar pronunciation, which are irrelevant in meaning completely. And a differentiation between 'Tongjia'(通假) and 'Jiajie'(假借) is made from the perspective of both the originating cause and its outcome. This differentiation can lead to the differentiation of 'Gujinzi' and Tongjiazi naturally, which consequently proves that those two should and could be differentiated. Chapter four deal with the differentiation of 'Gujinzi ' and characters with more than one images. It is easy to differentiate the two because characters with more than one images refer to those with the same meaning and pronunciation but two or more images. Thi...