Variant Character Study Of Nvshu

Nvshu,also called Female Character,is a unique letter symbol still inheriting around Hunan province and northern area of Guangxi province.As the long-term history of development and evolution,however,a great number of variant characters have come into being in the system of Nvshu.A profound thinking in this case will lay solid foundation to study the natures and characteristics of the Nvshu,and also services as a requisite premise to its study of normalization.Four parts are involved in this paper to make a study on the variant characters of the Nvshu with the induction as an exception.Firstly,by the means of quantitative analysis,this research conducts microcosmic and independent analysis,as well as the classification and organization in combination,on 1653 variant characters of theNvshu and completely carries on statistics about 469 groups of variants when it comes to the types of its internal relations at the same time.On the basis above,qualitative analysis is applied in this paper,aiming at discussing the resource of the characters,the differences and characteristics of its types in relation,and the reasons why variants come into being.Finally,a discussion about the issue of normalization is carried out in the end of this paper.The first chapter,from the view of philology,sorts out several controversial arguments about the current researching situation of the Nvshu and specifically illustrates the deficiency of the research about the variants.Take the Chinese Dictionary forNvshu,a dictionary collects relatively true and original female character resource,as the objective,this part do a scientific and effective research and analysis on variants.The second chapter firstly makes a relatively logical definition for the nature of the Nvshu and the concept of the variants.And then the variants are further divided into 2 aspects to take into consideration,which is inclusive of the original character on the one hand and the derived character on the other hand in terms of the source of the Nvshu.And a table about the source of variants is made with the analysis of the two aspects’ characteristics and laws followed by in the end of this part.On the basis of the classification of the characters’ resource that classified from every single variant,chapter 3 attempts to describe every group of the variants’ fonts and structural relations according to its internal seven relations and types.Chapter 4 attaches great importance on analyzing the general features and forming reasons of variant symbolic system in Nvshu.From the microcosmic view of individual,variant system is a large system contains numerous variant characters.And from the macroscopic view of characters’ group,variants are characteristically distribute unevenly in the number of fonts and the type of its structure in each group,and also there is a great gap even from one font to another.Two reasons are responsible for these characteristics that mentioned above.One is the internal reasons refer to the evolution of characters’ resource,structure and character itself.The other is external factors affected by region,culture and writers themselves.In addition,the normalization is discussed in this part based on the master of variants characteristics and the law of its development.To sum up,this paper conducts a relatively comprehensive collection of the variant characters in Nvshu,making a relatively scientific classification and analysis of characters’ resource in the light of its level and structural types,and establishes a relatively objective illustration of the characteristics and forming reasons about variants of theNvshu.Meanwhile,this paper can also function as research materials for the study of standardization and normalization of variants in Nvshu.