Segment Note Folk Characters

The term "Popular characters", appearing first iil Shuowen, refers to thesimple written characters which is popular among people and not accepted byofficials.Many scholars have notice on this popular characters after xushen. OnlyDuanyucai did large scale studies and explanations on it. After that, there'sno specific study on Duan's Annotation to the "pupular characters". The pre-sent paper studies on the popular characters clearly indicate in Duan's Anno)-tation. The present author did a lot of lesearch works, such as investigation,counting and analysis.The present thesis discusses the popular characters in the following Parts.The first part is an introduction, with which the anthor makes clear the writtingpurpose, approaches and values of this thesis.In the second part, the author studies on the popular characters in Duan's Works. Then the author re - examines the causes of the formation of popularcharacters in the third part. Finally, the author studies Duan's viewpoints onlanguages and characters and their limitatiolls.