The Research Of Simplified Characters Used In The Warring States Period

Simplification is a main tendency in the history of the development of Chinese Characters. After judging from the unearthed literatures we have got, we realize that the intensity of the simplification of Chinese Ancient Characters—the characters which were used during the Warring States period, I mean—is serious indeed, and we can put different characters into different types through analyzing those materials. And the paper is based on this discussion.According to the research of Professor He Linyi, a famous scholar who was an expert in the field, we can discuss the problem from two aspects, the microscopic and the macroscopic.In microscopic aspect, in order to put different characters of the Warring States period into corresponding classification as accurate as we can, we have to set several accurate definition at first. Take the stroke simplified and the exclusion parts for example, if the simplification referred to the pictographic characters, or self-explanatory characters, we can take the character into the former. And, if to the associative characters and phonogram, we can put it into the later.In macroscopic aspect, the paper divides the simplification of the characters of the Warring States period into two kinds, individual-characters and combined-characters. What’ smore, we can also draw several small classes out of them on the basis of that.There are also several innovative points in this paper.First of all, in the aspect of individual-characters, the paper proposes two small kinds of simplification for the first time, which are called Borrowing the shape of writing materials and the Simplification from wrong-variation separately. Borrowing the shape of writing materials is another special kind of simplification, which should not be missed. Through borrowing the relevant line of certain carrier plane, the simplification can be achieved out of people’s imagination. The last kind, the simplification from wrong-variation, has a close relationship with wrong-variation and assimilation, both of which are very important phenomena in the development of Chinese Characters, as we all know. And, it takes the research of simplification to the synchronic lay.Besides, the paper also picks the peeling of symbols out of those writings as a new kind of the simplification, although the quantity of related characters is not too much.Secondly, in the aspect of combined-characters, there are also some innovations. They are expressed by the two new kinds of simplification, which are called the cuts of combined-characters’stroke and the cuts of combined-characters’ digital separately. As a matter of fact, both of them mainly exist in the inscriptions of ancient currency.