A Study On The Component "口" In The Formation System Of Modern Chinese Character

Chinese character system is one of the most massive and complicated written language systems in the world.In order to have a comprehensive understanding of the whole system,it is essential to start with studying every single component that takes part in forming the entire character system.Based on the theory of Chinese character formation,this research takes all the characters in The Graded Chinese Syllables,Characters and Words for the Application of Teaching Chinese to the Speakers of Other Languages as materials and analyzes the characters with “口”-one of the most frequently-used components,aiming to unfold the diachronic development and synchronic visage of those characters.This research is divided into five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction dealing with the background,the aim and the research methods of this study.Chapter two demonstrates how the theory of Chinese character formation develops,generalizes the different definitions of components and corresponding principles of analyzing them,and introduces other studies relating to “ 口 ”.Chapter three classifies and discusses all the materials.Chapter four analyzes the functions of component “口” and the characters that it constructs.Chapter five is the conclusion.This research discovered that “口” has multiple functions of forming the shapes of characters and embodying the meanings of characters.Not only can “ 口 ” be a part of the shapes of other components,it can also functions independently as the component that embodies the information of the character it constructs.Among four main functions of embodyingthe meanings of characters,function of semantics is the most commonly-used one,then function of pictograph and function of marking,function of phonetics the least.As a semantic component,“ 口 ” mainly represents a semantic cluster;as a pictograph component,“口” symbolizes10 different figures;as a phonetic component,“ 口 ” has three ways of indicating the pronunciation of characters;as a marking component,“口”is mostly used to differentiate the meanings of several similar characters.Most characters with “ 口 ” as a component are meaning-pronunciation structure.Compared to the characters in other three grades,the ones in the first grade boast the most various structures.