First, the origin of the cursive "symbol" name
As we all know, Chinese characters are systematic, not arbitrary accumulation of symbols, which has long been recognized by philologists. As an auxiliary sketch of Chinese characters, cursive script (including Cao Zhang and Jin Cao) is developed after the cursive treatment of regular script, which is bound to be systematic. Moreover, no matter what kind of cursive script it is, its font can be analyzed, and a certain number of basic components can be cut out to form all the characters of cursive script. The cursive "symbol" refers to these basic components.
Mr Yu Youren should be the first person to use the word "symbol" to refer to the elements of cursive script. Yu Xiansheng explained this in Shuowen Jiezi: "There are 540 Shuowen radicals and 2 14 lexical radicals, and there is no corresponding relationship between Kai and Zhuan. The cover evolved from the characters, and the radicals should be divided and combined as appropriate. The cursive script is organized, and it is wonderful to increase or decrease the transshipment, and it is even more impossible to seal the rope. The symbols in the so-called standard cursive script, that is, the radicals, are headed by their structures and the same kind follows each other. "
Then, why should the components of cursive script be called symbols?
Throughout the history of Chinese characters, it can be said that the development and evolution of Chinese characters is a process in which pictographs gradually weaken and symbols gradually increase. "During the Warring States period, especially in the middle and late period, the characters were basically symbolic." (Note: Wang Fengyang: A Study of Chinese Characters, Jilin Literature and History Publishing House, 19891February 1st edition, page 2 16. After the official change, official script and regular script completely abandoned pictographic factors. As their auxiliary sketch, cursive script is gradually moving away from orthographic form, so, as linguist Wang Ning said, cursive script has become a kind of "symbolic symbol", and its components, of course, have also become symbolic components. Because of the cursive law of cursive script, the components of cursive script can't correspond to regular script one by one: one component of cursive script often corresponds to several different components in regular script, which can correspond to both word-forming components and non-word-forming components, with strong word-forming ability; And a component in the standard Chinese characters is often written in several ways in this grass. Obviously, cursive symbols are closely related to Chinese characters and have their own characteristics. Therefore, like Mr. Yu Youren, we still call these components with obvious cursive features "symbols". Although some people have put forward names such as "radical", "radical", "substitution symbol" and "basic form", they all mean the same thing. It is better to call it "symbol" after careful consideration.
Second, the source of cursive symbols
Judging from the evolution history of Chinese fonts, the evolution from one font to another is a gradual process. When the latter font is mature, there will be countless connections between the two fonts. Knowing this, we can understand why two seemingly different fonts have such a close relationship. The symbols of cursive script evolved from regular script step by step in this way, and all of them have their origins, which must be pointed out first. If we choose a cursive writing method of a word in different periods from the book "Compilation of cursive characters in Han bamboo slips" edited by Mr. Lu Xixing, and connect them in series, we can clearly see how cursive symbols gradually evolved from regular script and how they gradually merged with other components. Therefore, people should never think that when they create cursive script, they have already designed a set of symbols to replace the components or stroke groups in regular characters. In other words, cursive symbols were never invented overnight by someone. After long-term development and changes, it is active in cursive script widely used by the people, standardized by authoritative figures and beautified by calligraphers, and then recognized by people, and finally established on the basis of convention.
There are really few numbers in cursive script (such as the word "what" in modern cursive script), which seems to have nothing to do with the shape of regular script, probably because the cursive script has a great pace. In this case, although the formation of cursive script is arbitrary, or the unique writing style created by a calligrapher in pursuit of change may be popularized, we firmly believe that most cursive script forms have a corresponding relationship with regular script (including official script and regular script). As for a few figures, I'm afraid it's mainly because of insufficient information.
In his interpretation of standard cursive script, Mr. Yu Youren expounded how the "representative symbol" of cursive script was formed in two points: "First, it gradually changed from similarity to difference, and then became a popular form; Two, the rare radical, not vertical, and replaced by other symbols. If the radical is lucky, only the words "newspaper" and "administration" are used on the left, and the radical "county" is used on the left. If they are all vertical, the cursive organization is complicated and difficult to remember, and it is not practical. " The first one should be fine, and the second one is debatable. According to Yu Xiansheng, the rarely used radicals are replaced by symbols belonging to other commonly used radicals, which is obviously artificial and mandatory. Is that really the case? Let's look at some examples given by Yu Xiansheng.
Regarding the word "Bao", we relate several forms of this word in the process of cursive writing (note: the cursive characters used in this paper are all taken from the book "Han Jian Bian" edited by Mr. Lu Xixing. Compilation of Han bamboo slips, Shanghai Painting and Calligraphy Publishing House, 1989 1 February,1edition. ), you can clearly see the process of growing grass on the left side.
Obviously, each step is completed by linking or omitting changes, and the first step to the second step is the key step. After the completion of this step, the component "Xing" began to be confused with the cursive forms of regular script components such as "Fang" and "Hand" (the fifth and sixth steps were simplified glyphs, but neither mature nor today's grass adopted such glyphs, which will be discussed below). The word "which" has the same evolution process, so it is not redundant. Looking at the word "county" again, we arranged several forms in the process of sketching it, as follows:
Needless to say, the intermediate steps remind us that no one will rigidly replace them with a common part of cursive script from the beginning, because these parts are used less, at least they will not purposefully approach the form of a symbol at the beginning of planting grass.
Nevertheless, we do not deny the human factors in the process of symbol formation. Although the evolution of fonts is a natural and gradual process, it is written by people after all. We can speculate that in the process of cursive writing, when people are still in the groping stage, if the cursive writing form of a component is advanced at that time and can be accepted by everyone, then people will extend this writing method to other characters with this component, which can be regarded as a manifestation of human factors in the formation of cursive symbols. We can use two examples of vertical knives "Li" and "Dao" to see the formation process of the symbol "Li":
It can be seen that before the symbol ""was formed, there was almost no difference in the steps of these two words, and the writing of each step was the same. Therefore, we can think that the processing of cursive script for regular characters is by no means a random process, which takes care of the overall system of cursive script symbols from the beginning, and this transformation is even.
So, how far will this change go? Is the symbol as simple as possible? As we know, the shape of Chinese characters is restricted by both the law of simplicity and the law of differentiation (Note: For the contents of the law of simplicity and differentiation, see Wang Fengyang: A Study of Chinese Characters, Jilin Literature and History Publishing House, 198911st edition in February, page 8 14-829. ), cursive script is no exception. Simplified Chinese characters are easy to write, but if they are too simple, the differences between words will decrease accordingly, which is of course not conducive to the realization of the communicative function of cursive script as a text. However, we find that cursive symbols do not blindly pursue simplicity, but reach the simplest level in the process of cursive, while retaining some differences. If the grass is too simple to mix with other symbols easily, it will return to "using" those complicated writing methods again. For example, the word "Bao" we mentioned earlier is like this. Although the sixth glyph is not mixed with other words, the symbol on its right is already the same as the symbol ""(the glyphs of Cao Zhang and Cao Jin, such as "eye", "dot" and "yin", all contain this symbol, while the symbol of others just adds a wave). Therefore, let's look at the initial process of the word "Zhang".
Obviously, the glyphs after five are quite simple, especially the last two. Almost all the symbols that make up the glyph have been confused with other symbols, and the last one has almost become a "left" word. Based on this, mature Cao Zhang and Cao Jin did not choose these glyphs, but went back to find nutrients from Glyph 4 to develop themselves.
Another manifestation of human factors in the formation of cursive symbols is that people merge symbols according to the principle of "similarity leads to assimilation", that is, when cursive symbols have reached a fairly concise level in the process of evolution, people may directly change them into that symbol because their shapes are similar to other commonly used symbols. For example, the last two steps of the left evolution of the word "county" mentioned above may be like this. Of course, in some cases, the application of this principle may occur at the beginning of evolution. For example, cursive script can be written next to the word "one" and the word "ten", and cursive script can be written on the components of three words, such as "Jiang", "De" and "Shu". The stroke group of "rate" is the same as the word "death" in cursive script, which is probably similar to their regular characters. But on the whole, cursive symbols are confused with different components or stroke groups of orthography, and most of them are far apart. It can be seen that the "similarity principle" is mostly applied to the end of the cursive process.
To sum up, the difference between our view and Yu Xiansheng is that in the process of confusing cursive composition and even forming symbols, people's subjective initiative is mainly reflected in the final analogy, induction and sorting, rather than the "foresight" at the beginning of transformation.
In a word, cursive symbols have their origins. They are not whispering, but the result of font gradient driven by the practical purpose of fast writing. They are not the result of rigid rules or arbitrary cursive scripts, and they are by no means irregular. In addition, the "consanguineous relationship" between cursive symbols and orthographic components or stroke groups and the corresponding relationship to a certain extent are also strong proofs that cursive scripts rely on orthographic characters.
Third, the history of cursive symbol research and the shortcomings of predecessors.
It should be said that the study of cursive symbols has a long history. For example, various cursive rhymes widely circulated in history have long noticed this aspect, but because people originally wrote these rhymes for the convenience of memory, as long as people can remember the words appearing in the rhymes, they have achieved their goals, so the division of cursive forms is mostly blunt and face-to-face, and cannot be regarded as pure symbols. For example, there is such a sentence in "Song of Grass with Hundred Rhymes": "Erke Chaos" and "Point Urgent". As long as you know a little about cursive symbols, you will find this division far-fetched. Because the component "b" on the right side of the word "chaos" can be written as "b" in cursive script or "b" as it is (with the hook up) because of the joint writing relationship between the upper and lower words. The former can barely be called "guest" under "B", but if the hook points up, can it be called "guest"? In fact, the word "Luan" in regular script is a word with a left-right structure, and so is cursive script. And no matter which word the component is, its cursive script is the same, and so are the components. This is an important embodiment of the correspondence between cursive script and orthography, and it is also a powerful proof of its symbol system. In this case, it is more appropriate for us to divide the cursive form of the word "chaos" into two symbols: "harmony"; Dianji ignores the common phenomenon that the component "heart" in Chinese characters corresponds to the symbol ""in cursive script, and it is far-fetched and ridiculous to divide cursive script "urgency" into "harmony".
Later, Mr. Yu Youren did the best and most influential research on cursive symbols. In 1930s, Yu Xiansheng devoted himself to the study of "standard cursive script", trying to "spread cursive script to all parts of the world for convenience, give full play to cultural functions and save the time of the whole people ...". He systematically summarized 64 "representative symbols" on the left, right, above and below the standard cursive script. Unfortunately, Yu Xiansheng did not summarize all the symbols of cursive script in detail. Moreover, Yu Xiansheng's "standard cursive script" is actually a mixture of Cao Zhang, Jincao and Kuangcao in different times, so it is impossible to completely separate all symbols. Nevertheless, all later works on cursive symbols were more or less influenced by Yu Xiansheng.
In 1950s, Mr. Zhao Taimou from the Department of Foreign Languages of Shandong University, considering the reference significance of cursive script to the simplification of Chinese characters, counted 206 "basic forms" (which can be regarded as what we call "symbols") in the article "On the Simplification of Chinese Characters", which can be said to be a precedent for the exhaustive segmentation of cursive script symbols. However, after careful study, we will find that there are two problems in the "basic style" of cursive script summarized by Mr. Zhao: First, the corresponding relationship between cursive script and regular script has not been fully considered, and the old method of face-to-face segmentation has not been got rid of. This leads to some far-fetched segmentation (for example, the word "ran" is divided into two "basic bodies", and according to the corresponding relationship with regular script, the word is divided into three symbols), and some symbols that should be segmented are not reflected, such as; Secondly, from the examples in this paper, there are a lot of weeds in the selected glyphs (this is probably related to the original intention of the author to simplify Chinese characters with cursive script, and the shape of weeds is relatively simple, which just meets the author's standards), and the standardization of some glyphs is debatable. In short, from these "basic forms", it can be seen that Mr. Zhao lacks a clear and consistent unified principle in material selection and even in the specific operation process. Although he thinks that "with these 206 basic forms, all the cursive characters of these 6,000 commonly used characters can be written ..." (Note: Zhao Taimou: On the simplification of Chinese characters, see Journal of Shandong University Humanities Edition 1957 1 issue, page 180. However, as long as you look at it roughly, you will find that some extremely common symbols in cursive script, such as ""(often replacing "going to the end" in regular script), ""(often replacing "standing by the knife" in regular script) and "",are not within the 206 basic forms he summarized, so Mr. Zhao's induction has not really been exhausted.
In a word, the previous efforts are valuable and effective, but there are also some deficiencies and defects in different degrees. To sum up, there are mainly the following aspects:
First, I don't know the source of cursive symbols, ignoring the corresponding relationship between cursive symbols and regular script symbols and its own systematicness, which is reflected in the division of "face". This is also the biggest deficiency of previous research.
Secondly, we study Cao Zhang, modern grass and weeds together, among which it is more common to study modern grass and weeds together. The materials are not uniform, and the research results are of course unreliable.
Third, all the symbols of each cursive script have not been summarized in detail.
In fact, the reason why predecessors have such shortcomings and defects is that they have not formulated a set of systematic and scientific principles for dividing and summarizing cursive symbols.
Fourth, the work that needs to be done in the study of cursive symbols at present.
From the previous discussion, we can find that although the predecessors have made great achievements in the study of cursive symbols, there are also some deficiencies that cannot be ignored. Even now, there are still many specious vague concepts that plague people. In other words, there are still many problems (including some related problems) to be solved and a lot of work to be done in the study of cursive symbols. At present, we should do the following work:
Firstly, Cao Zhang and Cao Jin are defined respectively, so as to select research materials according to the definitions.
Second, purely select the materials of a cursive script (mainly Cao Zhang or Cao Cao) in the mature period, limit the scope, and conduct exhaustive investigation and analysis.
Third, formulate detailed principles of symbol segmentation and induction (which should be supplemented according to specific conditions in the actual segmentation process).
Fourthly, according to the established principles, we divide and summarize in detail, and strive to exhaustively summarize all the symbols of each cursive script.
In short, we should make full use of predecessors' achievements, foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, and thoroughly study cursive symbols and their related aspects. I believe it will help us to fully understand the laws of cursive script, the influence of cursive script on the simplification of Chinese characters, and to memorize cursive script quickly in cursive learning.