The Present Connection Between Form And Meaning Of Origin Of Chinese Characters

Now the relationship between form and meaning has been emphasized in philology study, which is about how the original forms of Chinese characters reflect its meaning. Considering this, people judge the changes of the forms of Chinese characters as erroneous transformation, including formal changes and deliberate changes(comparing with oracle bone inscriptions). This is not comprehensive. Tang Shengzhou proposed the idea of “the present connection between form and meaning”:The creation and the understanding of characters are not simultaneous. Different people had different understanding of the same character when they created them. In different periods, the same character has been given different meanings during its development and influenced by or has absorbed different cultural information. Thus, the form and meaning may change as concept changes. The form has a specific meaning and the relationship between the form and meaning is still closed in the new connection between the form and meaning. We call this new connection “the present connection between form and meaning”.This is a useful compliment to current philology study. The study of the original forms of Chinese characters is the origin, while the study of the present connection between form and meaning is the development. The comprehension study must be based on both.We start our study of the present connection between form and meaning of Origin of Chinese Characters, which is based on this theory. We divide the present connection between form and meaning of small-seal style of Origin of Chinese Characters into 2 classes and 8 sections.We analyze the intrinsic mechanism of the present connection between form and meaning by exemplification. We think:1 Origin of Chinese Characters is about the explanation of the classic. The classic means the Confucian Classics. Chinese characters came out earlier than the Confucian Classics did. Thus people use Confucian Classics to explain Chinese characters or use the form of characters to absorb universal truth from Confucian Classics. This is where the study of the present connection between form and meaning comes from.2 As the Book of Changes said “the meaning comes from its likeness”, the formation of Chinese characters is based on likeness. Because of the dynamic relation between the creation of likeness and the explanation of likeness or coding and decoding, there are may be more than one explanation of “meaning comes from the form”. The connection may be original or modern, theoretically the former is the only one, while the latter is not.The end of this essay briefly analyzes the present connection between form and meaning of official script and regular script, in order to prove the present connection between form and meaning in Origin of Chinese Characters.