Chinese characters are one of the oldest characters in the world, and they are called the three classic characters in the world together with cuneiform characters in Mesopotamia and holy books in Egypt. As the only ideographic character still in use in the world, Chinese characters are known as "fossils" of history and culture. As a visual symbol system of recording language, Chinese characters not only record the history of the Chinese nation for thousands of years, but also reflect the specific way of thinking and aesthetic feelings of China people with its unique material form. The appearance of Chinese characters has enabled the ancient Chinese civilization to be recorded and spread, and has become a valuable asset for people in China and even the world.
There are a large number of Chinese characters, so we must follow certain rules of word formation. Generally speaking, the earliest and most influential basic law of Chinese character configuration is the theory of "six books" put forward by Han Confucianism. It was Ban Gu, a historian of the Eastern Han Dynasty, who first sequenced the contents of the six books. Yi said in Hanshu: "The ancients entered primary school at the age of eight, so Zhou raised the country and taught six books, which are called the number of images, the number of images, the number of sounds, the number of sounds and the number of words." The earliest and most detailed explanation of "Six Books" is Xu Shen. He said in the preface to explaining words: "Li Zhou entered primary school at the age of eight, and he taught the country by Bao, and there were only six books. One refers to something, and the person referred to can see it, observe it, see it, and it is also up and down; Second, pictographic characters, pictographic characters, painted objects, follow the body, the sun and the moon; Third, sound and sound, sound and sound, in the name of things, examples complement each other, rivers also; Fourth, knowing, knowing, is more appropriate than attending class, so as to see the meaning? Wu Xin is also; Fifth, turn notes, turn notes, build classes, agree to accept each other and test from time to time; Sixth, borrow, borrow, there is no word in it, relying on sound to seek things, and the commander is also. " Nowadays, Dai Zhen's theory of "four bodies and two functions" has become a universal principle for people to analyze the structure of Chinese characters, such as Duan Yucai, Zhu Shengjun and Wang Yun. The basic principle of the formation of Chinese characters is that "the opposite sex is the key, and the sound is the purpose." Next, I will briefly describe the theory of "four bodies and two uses": Why do pictophonetic characters reflect the phonetic trend of characters without losing the deep ideographic function of Chinese characters?
As we all know, Chinese characters have four recognized basic structures, namely, pictograph, signifier, knowing character and pictophonetic character. So what are pictophonetic characters? Pictophonetic characters, as the name implies, are words composed of phonetic surface and ideographic surface. With the complexity of social life, hieroglyphics that directly describe things that exist objectively are increasingly stretched. People should not only refer to simple and concrete things, but also refer to complex and abstract things, such as actions, abstract psychology, feelings and thoughts. And these things are intangible, and people can't express them directly through descriptions or portraits. So on the basis of pictographic characters, there are finger characters and literacy. Pictophonetic characters are formed on the basis of pictographic characters, signifier characters and knowing characters. It is generally believed that pictophonetic characters, some of which represent the meaning category, are called signifiers or pictographs; One part represents the sound category, which is called phonetic symbol or sound side. Pictophonetic characters are the most effective way of word formation. Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty described pictophonetic characters in the Preface of Shuowen Jiezi: "Pictophonetic characters take things as names, and analogies complement each other, so rivers are also". Duan Yucai in the Qing Dynasty wrote: "In the name of things, half is right; For example, complement each other, that is, half a tone. The words "Jiang" and "He" are both named after water. For example, they sound like work, and they can, can be their names because of work. It is different from referring to things, hieroglyphics. ...
According to the statistics of Mr. Li Xiaoding, a scholar in Taiwan Province Province, pictophonetic characters account for about 27. 1.4% in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, rising to 8 1.24% in Xiao Zhuan, accounting for 90% in regular script in Song Dynasty, while the proportion of pictophonetic characters in modern Chinese characters exceeds 90%. Undoubtedly, the study of pictophonetic characters has also become the focus of philology research. As Mr. Huang Kan said, Shuowen has 9,000 words, and its shape and sound rank among the nine. Husband's single body is a text, and the combination is a word. Monomers are mostly pictographs, referring to things, while combinations are almost sounds. Cover ten times more ancient and modern words with sound than those without sound. Therefore, the writer, the change of speech; And sound is the deep sea of words. The sound and shape are unknown, and the learning of characters is unknown. "(Huang Kan, Editor-in-Chief, Exegesis of Chinese Phonology, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1983, p. 35).
The Book of Changes holds that the original hieroglyphics should be the original form of word creation. The pictophonetic characters, indicating characters and knowing characters are all produced on the basis of hieroglyphics. The development of pictophonetic characters into the main configuration method of Chinese characters has gone through a long process. In this process, the function of pictophonetic characters has become increasingly confused and diluted, but its basic function has not wavered. After the founding of New China, Chinese characters were simplified and transformed, and the phonetic symbols of Chinese characters were completely meaningless, and most of them were ignored. The development of pictophonetic characters to simplification of Chinese characters is not obvious. Then, why do pictophonetic characters not lose their deep ideographic function, although they reflect the phonetic tendency of characters? Here we can analyze the reasons from three aspects:
First of all, pictophonetic characters indicate their semantic categories and can indicate the evolution of our ancient society. The number of words collected by each semantic category reflects whether this field is closely related to human life. The emergence or disappearance of a semantic class in batches is also due to the evolution of culture. Tang Lan, a famous writer and epitaph, said, "It can show the evolution of human beings. For example, most of the 67 "yes" characters in Shuo Wen Jie Zi Bu are pictophonetic characters related to sacrifice. Generally speaking, radicals are semantic symbols. " "Shuo Wen Shi Wen Bu": "Shi, the sky hangs like an elephant, seeing good or bad, so I show people. Write words from two or two ancient texts. Three drops, sun, moon and stars. Observe astronomy to observe the changes of time. Show, god also. Everything on display is from this play. "For example, temples, spring festivals, other sacrifices, ceremonies, Zen, clubs and meetings. At the same time, with the development and progress of society, the relationship between livestock and human beings is getting closer and closer, and there are more and more related traits. For example, there are 239 words from "Niu" in Ancient Chinese Dictionary, 46 words from "Niu" in Modern Chinese Dictionary and only 8 words in Modern General Chinese Dictionary. In addition, the word "silk" representing color is not common now. Secondly, the phonetic symbols of most pictophonetic characters are not pure phonetic symbols, they are meaningful in themselves, but this meaning is obscure, so most people don't pay attention to it. Simply put, it is "the sound is also positive." For example, Shuowen: "Politics, righteousness, obedience, righteousness, righteousness. " ; " Strange, add words, follow words, witchcraft. In addition, "slander", "slander", "riding a horse" and "getting married" are all such situations. Simply put, pictophonetic characters are ideographic and ideographic. Finally, the appearance of pictophonetic characters has produced a large number of homophones, which are a group of Chinese characters with the same or similar pronunciation and similar meaning. The creation of this phonological series also reflects a lot of cultural information. For example, "take" means "marry", and Shuowen says: "take, follow and seize. "The Analects of Confucius Shuer" says: "You take Wu as your surname. "In addition,' faint' means' marriage', faint, from Japan, from the sidelines." "Ground" means under the sun, which together means that the sun has set. "Shuowen" is "faint and the sun is dark." "Marriage, husband's family also. Ceremony, marrying a woman will make you faint. Women are also yin, so they marry. " (Shuowen) There is also a "fate" through "surname"; Branch "leads to" branch "and adds" and so on "before" drive ".
Because of its own advantages and the development of social productive forces, pictophonetic characters occupy a dominant position in Chinese characters. Pictophonetic characters have the characteristics of ideographic, phonetic and ideographic, but for various reasons, some functions of pictophonetic characters gradually weaken. This article states one by one. During the development and evolution of Chinese characters, phonetic notation (phonetic notation side) and ideographic symbols (pictographic side) gradually lost contact with whole characters and became symbols, thus marked characters and semi-marked characters appeared. In the 1940s, Mr. Tang Lan described the study of symbolization of Chinese characters, and in the 1980s, Mr. Qiu Xigui first defined the concept of symbolization of Chinese characters. With the in-depth study of Chinese characters, modern scholars have further studied the symbolization of Chinese characters, and began to introduce quantitative research into the symbolic and semi-symbolic fields of Chinese characters. As the main body of Chinese characters, pictophonetic characters are more and more marked, and there will be more and more marked characters and semi-marked characters in the future development of Chinese characters, which is the inevitable result of the development of Chinese characters, social progress and human civilization. The pictophonetic features of Chinese characters show that Chinese characters are ancient and often new, keep pace with the times and can meet the requirements of modernization.