The Diachronic Research On The Pictophonetic Characters In The Oracle Inscriptions

The form and sound play the same role in the Pictophonetic Character which integrates sound and meaning. And the Pictophonetic Character has outstanding advantages in the ability of expressing meanings, distinguishing characters and reproducing itself, so it develops and becomes the principal part of Chinese Characters. We have not done deep research on the Pictophonetic Character although there are a few Pictophonetic Character in the Oracle Inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty, so we do not have all-round, scientific and direct understanding of the development of the Pictophonetic Character,and at last, we can not make clear the origin and the development covered by the mass of materials.So, this paper makes use of the newly-discovered materials and lists the diachronic forms for the Pictophonetic Character in the Oracle hiscriptions of the Shang Dynasty on the base of the predecessors' achievements. And this paper discloses the 5-stage internal situations and discovers the methods of emergence and development of the early Pictophonetic Character through the diachronic research, so that we can improve the time research on the Pictophonetic Character to issue much earlier materials for the research on the history of Chinese language.