Research Of "?" In Shaping Of Bone Inscription And Bronze Inscription In Western Zhou And Chunqiu

In all written scripts,Chinese is unique in its complicated formation and primal meaning.Formation of Chinese character glyphs has been focus of text linguistics research.This essay defines a new conception of “dian”(?).Unlike the basic stroke of modern Chinese characters,“dian” is a minuscule component of bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions,including strokes of small chunk and very short dots and lines.Although it's small visually,it's still important in formation of characters.This essay takes bone inscriptions from Shang dynasty,and bronze inscription from Western Zhou and Chunqiu dynasties,using classification and systemization,from synchronic and diachronic points of view,analyzed a collection of characters to extract function and history of “dian” in formation,in order to explore function of “dian” in bone and bronze inscriptions.This essay collected 213 bone inscription glyphs containing “dian”.Analysis shows that “dian” in bone inscriptions has six functions: mimicry,symbolization,ornamentation,signification,phoneticization,and synthesis.Mimicry is the major function: “dian” can mimic common objects in nature,like water,fire,and earth,in their original form;it can also mimic organism and body parts of animals like human,monkey,dog and birds;it can also mimic other objects,like the two “dian” upon the vertical stroke of “?” which mimics pestle.Glyphs containing “dian” as a symbolization part takes 15.02%,as other ornamentation part takes 7.04%,as signification part takes 7.98%,as phoneticization part takes 2.35%,synthetically take 1.88%.These statistics show generalization and abstraction ability of Shang people.In bronze inscriptions of Western Zhou and Chunqiu,formation functions are continuation of those in bone inscriptions,showing their inheritance relationship.It also shows that written scripts developed in a gradual manner instead of a leaping one,and structure of Chinese characters has its endogenous stability.However,written characters constantly develop,generating new characteristics that will be shown in formation changes if not in functions.In the characters gathered,basic change of formation like change in direction,number or location takes 38.84%,simplification of “dian” takes 19.01%,complication takes 7.44%,adhesion takes 9.09%,morph takes 9.09%,synthetic change that includes more than one of these change takes 16.53%.In general,except basic changes taking up a larger part,other changes are relevantly close in proportion.This suggests a considerable change of character formation from bone inscription to bronze inscription.In this process,previous “dian” might disappear or change or adhere to into other strokes.“dian” may also appear as a completely new stroke,typically as an ornamentation.The two paragraphs above sums up core content of this essay.Glyphs are classified into charts and formation function and change pattern of representative glyphs are analyzed using its originating manuscripts.“dian” is usually important in identifying characters.Sometimes it signals important information,and sometimes it acts as anchor of evolved glyphs of different time.These discoveries are helpful to future identification works in that even small parts shouldn't be ignored due to its formation functions.