A Study Of Radical Of "Kou" In Oracle Bone Inscription, Bronze Inscription And Shuowen

As underground ancient character materials have being discovered and investigationbased on them since the modern times,traditional studies of Shuowen based oncharacter,phonology and emendation,have stepped into a new period of time depend on theunderground ancient characters.In this paper we adopt“Dual Evidences Method” promotedby Wang Guowen to study the radical of “kou” in oracle bone inscription,bronzeinscription and Shuowen through synchronic and diachronic point of view.We investigatethe polysemy of radical of “kou”and the variety of kou’s orientations from the view ofword meaning and character pattern.At bronze inscription study phase,we start withcomparing materials with those from our study of oracle bone inscription and then classifyextra56bronze inscriptions,which constructed with direct “kou”radical into fivetypes,according to property of “kou”as radical.The five types are:(1)Characterswhose“kou” radicals were using as decorative symbols.(2)Characters can’t be found inoracle bone inscription.(3)Characters added “kou”radicals as pictographicelement,(4)Characters whose “kou”radicals are added in this time of period wereconsequence of erroneous transformation,(5)Characters whose structure can hardly beanalyzed.At the phase of study based on Shuowen,this paper analyzes “problematiccharacters”with radical of“kou”,making use of unearthed ancient materials,then points outdifferences in Shuowen from former time. By the end of our research,we made extraillustration of the formation of “kou”radical in Shuowen.