Research On "Letting The Word"

"Shuo Wen Zi Tong" was written by Gao-Xianglin, a scholar of Qing dynasty. It is a book that researches the form, the pronunciation and the meaning about part of Chinese characters on the dictionary "Shuo Wen Jie Zi". Today, we need a systematic study and summarize on the results of previous scholars in-depth urgently. While has been finished for more than a century, the attention on the book is inadequate and no one has in-depth study about it. Understanding the main contents accurately and assessment of the status and influence comprehensively of the book can help the subject of "Shuo wen" being further development."Shuo Wen Zi Tong" is based on the dictionary "Shuo Wen Jie Zi" and select almost two thousand five hundred characters to expand research from the dictionary. In each character, quoted the explanations of "Shuo Wen" and the texts Xu-Xuan added firstly. After a comparison of two books, we found some mistakes such as mix two characters up for the similar pronunciation or shape, writing down other characters, the phrases change and other issues exist in the two books, which will affect the text reading if we do not corrected.The contents of "Shuo Wen Zi Tong" are not consistent with the original when referenced to the dictionary "Shuo Wen Jie Zi". On the stylistic rules and layout, most of "Que" were omitted, some "Yi Sheng"analytical inherited and slightly changed but some changed to phonogram; some of the associative compound also changed to phonogram or "Yi Sheng"analytical; made criticism to "nonphonogram”, which came by Xu-Xuan, made some supplements and corrections in the face of the unreasonable interpretation or difficult to understand in "Shuo Wen ". In a word, the book "Shuo Wen Zi Tong" is valuable, but also insufficient.The study of Chinese characters in "Shuo Wen Zi Tong" can be discussed from character pattern, pronunciation and meaning the three aspects respectively. On character pattern, "Shuo Wen Zi Tong" collected a variety of character phenomenon such as allogeneic characters, interchangeable characters, analyzing some characters with similar form and so on; on pronunciation, the book involved pronunciations in classical literature in addition to the "Fan Qie" that Xu-Xuan added, particularly thing is, the book also collect some of "Xie Yin"; on the meaning of characters, except add example sentence as evidence in sorting interpretation of "Shuo Wen", but also brings together the other meanings of the characterThe academic value of the book is mainly reflected in three respects: be beneficial to the study of "Shuo Wen", helpful to Chinese Traditional Semantics and large dictionary. There are also limitations: the Inscription is not of the best quality, thus there are lots of corruptions; the range of interchangeability characters is too wide that treat characters with similar forms as interchangeable; the study of ancient pronunciations is inaccuracy. Nevertheless, the academic values of "Shuo Wen Zi Tong" still contribute to Chinese characters study.