Study Of Pictophonetic Characters In The Oracle-bone Inscriptions

Xu Shen said in ShuoWenJieZi that Picto-phonetic Character is made up of the sound and the meaning, such as the word jiang and he. There are 80 percent Picto-phonetic characters in more than nine thousand characters ShuoWenJieZi. This kind of word-making method make up for the limitation of other word-making methods like xiangxing, zhishi, huiyi, it is the most productive word-making methods. The Chinese characters are all most the Picto-phonetic characters in the latest ancient. Up to date, the Chinese character maintains its vigorous vitality because of the Picto-phonetic characters' powerful function. The oracle-bone inscriptions is the earliest recorded systematic characters, examining the overall situation of Picto-phonetic Character in oracle-bone inscriptions will help us know the early features of the Picto-phonetic characters, the way that Picto-phonetic characters have shaped, then explore the evolution of the Chinese character. Based on the Predecessors' explanation, we made a comprehensive survey on nearly four thousand oracle-bone inscriptions, in order to explore something in the Picto-phonetic characters making method.Discussion about the origin of the Picto-phonetic characters is a very important part in this paper, there have some typical opinions, such as the Picto-phonetic begins from the jiajie, the sound becomes the meaing, the solo Picto-phonetic have part of sound function, and so on., however, we think the earliest Picto-phonetic characters are made according to the meaning expression words. Yu Shengwu held the attitude that the origin of the Picto-phonetic characters is from some solo xiangxing characters have developed having part sound expression solo xiangxing characters, and then divide into the Picto-phonetic characters made by the sound and the shape. Moreover, he thinks these have part sound expression solo xiangxing characters is between xiangxing and the Picto-phonetic, they can be called solo Picto-phonetic, such as qiang, jiang, tian, mi, and so on. Under the inspiration of Yu Shengwu's "solo Picto-phonetic", we have found these words in the oracle-bone inscriptions, this kind of words have Special configuration, we call them "the words whose sound become the shape", the discussion about this part is the core of this paper, which can illustrate the origin of the Picto-phonetic characters in oracle-bone inscriptions. The study method of this article concentrates on the determinant of the Picto-phonetic characters. We have six standers, for example, we study the ancient characters in the dynamic way, and respect the Picto-phonetic characters' one meaning one sound hierarchy.This article divides the Picto-phonetic characters' structure into seven parts: the sound becomes the shape, shape forming characters become the absolute Picto-phonetic characters, the shape becomes the sound, adding the sound, adding the shape, changing the sound and the shape, directly made by the sound and the shape. Each of these sorts, we give examples, and discuss their structure characteristics. This paper also discusses the differences between the Picto-phonetic characters and other words that have sound, after the text we accompanied the word table of the Picto-phonetic characters in oracle-bone inscriptions, and give a brief description of the word Example.