The Study On Off-table Variant Chinese Characters Of The General Standard Chinese Characters Table In Modern Chinese Dictionary

The problem of variant Chinese characters is one of the hot topics in the study of modern Chinese characters.The study of variant Chinese characters has been paid much attention since 1955.The research on variant Chinese characters mainly focuses on the definition,types and causes of them.Researchers have also done some investigations of variant Chinese characters,which center on the principles,approaches and the existing problems of variant Chinese characters in The First Batch of Tabulated Variant Forms of Chinese Characters,the attached list of the General Standard Chinese Characters Table and some great Chinese dictionary such as variant Chinese characters table of Grand Chinese Characters Dictionary and Modern Chinese Dictionary.Although previous studies improve the understanding of variant Chinese characters,there are some deficiencies about them.Few researches are mainly based on variant Chinese characters out of the existing arrangement table or dictionary.This paper mainly takes the off-table variant Chinese characters of General Standard Chinese Characters Table in the Modern Chinese Dictionary(6th edition)as the main objects of analysis,and refers to the off-table variant Chinese characters in the Modern Chinese Dictionary(5th edition)and the Modern Chinese Dictionary(7th edition).A total of 551 groups of off-table variant Chinese characters are collected.This paper combines quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis to make an exhaustive investigation and analysis of 551 groups of off-table variant Chinese characters in Modern Chinese Dictionary from the perspective of modern usage of Chinese characters and ancient usage of Chinese characters,to investigate the pronunciation and meaning items of both the selected character and variant form of variant Chinese characters and the character frequency in the corpus.From the above investigation of the pronunciation and meaning items of the selected characters and variant forms of variant Chinese characters,the relationship between them can also be found out.The analysis of the relationship revealed the types of them.There are four types from both the perspective of modern usage of Chinese characters and ancient usage of Chinese characters,that is "variant Chinese character with the same pronunciation and meaning","inclusive variant Chinese character","overlapping variant Chinese character" and "erroneous variant Chinese character".The inclusive variant Chinese characters can be divided into two types,which are inclusive variant Chinese characters that selected characters contain variant forms,inclusive variant Chinese characters that variant forms contain selected characters.Only the variant Chinese character with the same pronunciation and meaning and the inclusive variant Chinese characters that selected characters contain variant forms can be arranged.The last three kind of types cannot be arranged.Thus,from the perspective of modern usage of Chinese character,there are 498 groups(90.3811%)of off-table variant Chinese characters in Modern Chinese Dictionary that can be arranged.And there are 53groups(9.6189%)of off-table variant Chinese characters that cannot be arranged.There are 335 groups(60.7986%)in Modern Chinese Dictionary from the perspective of ancient usage of Chinese character that can be arranged,and a total of 216 groups(39.2014%)cannot be arranged.The results of character frequency statistics show that the cumulative frequency of standard Chinese characters from the perspective of modern Chinese characters is 4.8944%.Besides,the cumulative frequency of the variant Chinese characters is 0.6906%.In the usage of ancient time,the cumulative frequency of standard Chinese characters is 4.2397%,and the cumulative frequency of variant Chinese characters is 0.6706%.Then on the base of these dates,145 groups of off-table variant Chinese characters in Modern Chinese Dictionary can be used as addition of variant Chinese characters to supplement the General Standard Chinese Characters Table.And there 88 groups of variant Chinese characters with the same pronunciation and meaning,58 groups of including variant Chinese characters.In addition,this paper makes a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in the scope,principles and methods of collecting variant Chinese characters between General Standard Chinese Characters Table and Modern Chinese Dictionary.Based on that,this paper summarizes the findings and implications of the study of off-table variant Chinese characters in Modern Chinese Dictionary for the future work of sorting out variant Chinese characters.