Chinese Characters and Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Liu Shu is the basic principle of Chinese character combination, which is mentioned in Zhou Li, but the specific content is not explained. Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty expounded the structural principles of the Chinese character "Liu Shu" in Shuo Wen Jie Zi: pictographic, ideographic, comprehensible, pictophonetic, phonological, transliteration and borrowing.

hieroglyph

This word-making method is described according to the appearance characteristics of objects. The so-called painting into its object, the same is true of the body. Such as the sun, the moon, the mountains and the water, originally depicted the patterns of the sun, the moon, the mountains and the water, and then gradually evolved into the present shape.

Self-evident character

This refers to the method of expressing abstract things, and so does the so-called "each refers to what it is". If you write "up" on it, people will write "down" on it.

Pictophonetic method of word formation

This is a unique sound expressed by a specific shape (root sound) in the text. For example: Hu, the word can also be a root, combined with different attribute roots, can be synthesized into: butterfly, butterfly, lake, gourd, Hu, gas and so on. And use the same pronunciation to express different things (some only have initials). However, due to the phonological changes of ancient and modern languages, many similar ancient pictophonetic characters have no homophones in today's Mandarin.

Associative compound

This word-formation method combines two radicals to derive new meanings. For example, when the sun and the moon merge into one, the sun and moonlight become "bright". The word "people" and "words" together is the word "faith", which means what people said before; There is a letter that this man abides by what he says.

Characters that explain/are synonymous with each other

This is used to annotate these two words, which are synonymous but have different shapes. Xu Shen explained in Hanshu: "Building a class, agreeing to accept each other, and taking the test as usual." , how do you say this? The ancient word "test" can be said to be "longevity", and "old" has the same meaning as "test", that is, the so-called old people take the test and the candidates are old. The book of songs "Daya Baipu" also said: "A textual research on Zhou Wangshou." . There are also some immortal ancients in Su Shi's poem Qu Yuan Tower. Why should we compare them? In a word. Among them, "Kao" means "Lao", and it is particularly noteworthy that later generations of philologists have also made a lot of explanations on the aforementioned definition of Xu Shen. Among them, there are three types, namely, shape shift theory, sound shift theory and meaning shift theory. But some people think that these three statements are not comprehensive enough. Jelly Lin, a contemporary archaeologist, also explained that "Zhuan Zhu" is a form (root) to record two words with completely different pronunciations and meanings. Such as "broom and woman" and "mother and daughter" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

use

In short, this method uses one word to express something else. Generally speaking, there is a new thing that can't be described, so we borrow a root with similar pronunciation or attribute to express this new thing. For example, "You" originally meant the right hand (first seen in Oracle Bone Inscriptions), and later it was disguised as "You". Smell means to listen to things with your ears. For example, "University? In Chapter 7, there is a sentence "Turn a blind eye, listen but don't smell, eat but don't know its taste", but it was later used as an olfactory verb (although some people think it is misused).

Summarize the above six books, the first two items, "word-making method" also; Second, the "combination method" is also; The last two items, "using Chinese characters", are the same. These six principles are philological theories summarized by ancient philologists. The rules of Chinese character creation included in it have evolved over a long period of time, and are not created by any one person.

[Edit] The structure of Chinese characters

Chinese characters are formed by arranging one or more radicals (one-dimensional characters in European languages) into a square in a specific space, so they have another name for square characters. Structurally, Chinese characters have the following characteristics:

There is a high information density in a word. When expressing the same thing, you can express the same information in a shorter space than phonetic notation, so the reading efficiency of Chinese characters is very high.

A Chinese character consists of more than 400 pictographs such as gold, wood, water, fire and earth, which are combined together like building blocks.

The meaning of an unknown character can be separated, and its meaning can be inferred from the composition of the root and the configuration of the space. When new things are difficult to express in the evolution of the times, new words can be synthesized and used according to the principle of radical combination. For example, the Chinese word uranium is a new word created in modern times to express a newly discovered chemical element.

The spatial configuration of Chinese character roots has an influence on the meaning: if it is the same combination of "dead heart", the left and right rows of "busy" and the upper and lower rows of "forgotten" are arranged differently, which leads to different meanings; The part with the word "Ai" on the right side of the text indicates that the right hand (left hand means left hand) is holding something and doing something to the left root (bronze inscription and Oracle Bone Inscriptions discovered in archaeology). If the right hand holds something on it, it becomes "Ai". Almost all people with this root are aggressive or use violence to achieve a certain purpose, such as attacking, defeating, knocking, collecting and so on.

[Edit] Glyph (China Calligraphy)

The stroke Chinese characters of "Guo" have different writing methods, that is, they have different fonts; Different fonts have different fonts.

Chinese characters written in regular fonts (such as regular script, Song style, official script, seal script, etc. ) is a kind of square character, and each character occupies the same space. Chinese characters can be divided into two parts, namely, knowing words and compound words, and knowing words can't be separated, such as "Wen" and "Zhong". Combined Chinese characters are composed of basic components, accounting for more than 90% of Chinese characters. Common combinations of compound words are: upper and lower structures, such as "smile" and "tip"; Left and right structures, such as "word" and "family"; Semi-closed structure, such as "similarity" and "inclination"; Fully enclosed structure, such as "group" and "meeting"; Composite structure, such as "win" and "point". The basic components of Chinese characters include single words, radicals and other non-word-forming components.

The smallest constituent unit of Chinese characters is strokes.

When writing Chinese characters, the direction and order of strokes, that is, the order of strokes, are relatively fixed. The basic rules are: first horizontal and then vertical, first left and then down, from top to bottom, from left to right, first outside and then inside, then sealed, first in the middle and then on both sides. The stroke order of Chinese characters with different writing styles may be different.

[Edit] Pronunciation

Chinese characters are the same writing system in many dialects, and each word represents a syllable. Now, Mandarin is used as the standard pronunciation in Chinese mainland. The syllables of Putonghua are determined by one initial, one vowel and tone, and there are more than 65,438+0,300 syllables actually used. Because of the huge number of Chinese characters, there are obvious homophones; At the same time, it also exists in the case that the same word has multiple tones, which is called polyphonic words. This situation is common among all kinds of people in China.

Although Chinese characters are mainly ideographic, they are not without phonetic components. The most common are names and places, followed by transliteration of foreign words, such as sofa. In addition, there are some original words, such as (Yi Ming) "Alas" and "Haha" laughter. But even so, there are still some ideographic elements, especially the names and place names of countries. Even foreign names and place names have some ideographic bottom lines. For example, "Bush" must not be transliterated as "immortal".

Because Chinese characters themselves are not phonetic, although the number and writing methods of Chinese characters have changed from the Han Dynasty to the 20th century, we can't see the phonetic changes. Special research is needed to infer their pronunciations in ancient Chinese and middle Chinese. Some scholars believe that before the Han Dynasty, the pronunciation of a Chinese character was two syllables, a small syllable and a large syllable, similar to Korean and Japanese today. See ancient Chinese for details.

The pronunciation of Chinese characters in Japanese can be divided into "phonetic reading" and "training reading", and a word often has multiple pronunciations, because the pronunciations introduced to Japan from China in different periods are different.

In Korean, it is roughly a word and a sound, without training.

Besides Japan, other countries that use Chinese characters also use some disyllabic words, such as "Li" (sea), "Hao" (gallon) and "Hao" (kilowatt). However, due to the official abolition, it is basically not used in Chinese mainland, but it is still used in Taiwan Province Province, and most people understand its meaning.

[Editor] Athena Chu

The earliest phonetic notation methods are reading if and direct notation. The reading method is to use words with similar pronunciations as phonetic notation, which is what Xu Shen used to explain Chinese characters, such as "shooting, shooting and reading accurately". Direct notation is to use another Chinese character to express the pronunciation of this Chinese character. For example, a woman speaks for herself, and the speaker says "Yue" is used for phonetic notation.

Both of the above methods have inherent defects. Some words have no homophones or homophones are so uncommon that it is difficult to play the role of phonetic notation, such as "socks".

The anti-tangent method was developed in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and it is said that it was influenced by Sanskrit, which used pinyin characters. The pronunciation of Chinese characters can be marked by backcutting, that is, the initial consonant of the first word and the vowel and tone of the second word are combined to make phonetic notation, so that all Chinese characters can be combined. For example, the pronunciation of "Lian" is the combination of the initial of "Lang" and the vowel and tone of "Dian".

Since modern times, Chinese phonetic symbols (commonly known as ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) and phonetic notation methods of many Latin letters have been developed. Phonetic symbols are still a part of teaching in Taiwan Province Province, but at present, Chinese Pinyin is the most widely used in Chinese mainland.

Because Chinese characters are mainly ideographic, the phonetic notation is weak. This feature makes the literature of the last 1000 years, like the western world that uses pinyin, have no big difference in wording, but it also makes it difficult for people to infer the ancient phonology. For example, the pronunciation of "Pang" comes from "Dragon", but today the former is pronounced as "Pang" and the latter as "Dragon" in Beijing dialect. How to explain this difference is a subject of phonology.

[Editor] Chinese characters and words

Chinese characters are the smallest unit of Chinese.

Morpheme is the smallest unit of Chinese ideogram, similar to English words and phrases. Most Chinese characters can form morphemes independently, such as "I", which is similar to that English words consist of a single letter, such as "I". Most words in modern vernacular Chinese are composed of more than two Chinese characters. However, unlike the relationship between "words" and "letters" in English, the meaning of morphemes is often related to the meaning of each Chinese character when it forms morphemes independently, thus simplifying memory to a considerable extent.

Words include morphemes and phrases composed of several morphemes.

The high efficiency of Chinese characters is reflected in hundreds of basic hieroglyphics, which can be synthesized into tens of thousands of Chinese characters, representing all kinds of things in the sky and underground; Thousands of commonly used words can be easily combined into hundreds of thousands of words.

However, on the other hand, it has become a burden to accurately grasp the collocation forms and usage of these hundreds of thousands of words. There are about tens of thousands of commonly used words in Chinese, with a total vocabulary of about one million. Although it seems daunting in quantity, it is not out of reach to master most Chinese word-formation because of its ideographic nature. Therefore, as far as vocabulary is concerned, its learning difficulty is not high; In contrast, mastering the same number of foreign words has a much greater memory intensity.

From the perspective of ancient Chinese, the original meaning of Chinese characters is more accurate and efficient than the May 4th vernacular movement. For example, Mr. Zhu Bangfu promoted the accurate use of Chinese characters in ancient times.

[Edit] The number of Chinese characters

There is no exact number of Chinese characters, and there are probably thousands of Chinese characters used in daily life. According to statistics, 1000 commonly used words can cover about 92% of written materials, 2,000 words can cover more than 98%, and 3,000 words have reached 99%. Simplified statistics are not much different from traditional statistics.

There are more than 80,000 Chinese characters in history (there are also more than 60,000 sayings), most of which are variant characters and rare words. The vast majority of variant characters and uncommon words have naturally disappeared or been standardized, and generally only occasionally appear in names and places other than ancient Chinese. In addition, after the first batch of simplified characters, there are a number of "two simplified characters", which have been abolished, but a few numbers are still popular in society.

Xu Shen counted the number of Chinese characters for the first time in Shuo Wen Jie Zi in Han Dynasty, and * * * included 9353 words. Later, the jade tablets written by Gu in the Southern Dynasties were recorded as 169 17. On this basis, the jade tablets in Daguangyihui were said to have 22,726 words. After that, Lei Pian, which was officially edited by the Song Dynasty, received 3 13 19 words. Another book, Ji Yun, compiled by the Song Dynasty authorities, received 53,525 words, which was once the book with the largest number of words.

In addition, some dictionaries have more words, such as Kangxi Dictionary in Qing Dynasty, with 47,035 words. There are 48,902 words in the Japanese dictionary of dahanhe, with 1062 words in the appendix. The Chinese Dictionary in Taiwan Province Province has 49,905 words; The Chinese Dictionary has 54,678 words. In the 20th century, the ocean of Chinese characters has the largest number of published words, with 85,000 words.

Among the computer coding standards for Chinese characters, the largest Chinese character coding at present is the national standard CNS 1 1643 of Taiwan Province Province. At present, (4.0)*** contains 76,067 verifiable simplified, Japanese and Korean Chinese characters, but it is not popular and is only used in a few environments such as household administration system. The big five codes commonly used in Taiwan Province and Hongkong include 13053 traditional Chinese characters. GB 18030 is the latest internal code character set in People's Republic of China (PRC). GBK contains 209 12 simplified characters, traditional Chinese characters, Japanese and Korean, while the earlier GB 23 12 contains 6763 simplified characters. Unicode unified ideographic basic character set contains 20,902 Chinese characters, with two extended areas, totaling more than 70,000 characters.

In the early Chinese character system, the number of words was insufficient, and many things were represented by interchangeable words, which caused the ambiguity of text expression. In order to improve the clarity of expression, Chinese characters have gone through a stage of gradual complexity and a large number of words. The excessive increase in the number of Chinese characters makes it difficult to learn Chinese characters, and the meaning that a single Chinese character can express is limited, so the meaning of many single Chinese characters is expressed by Chinese characters, such as common double spelling words. At present, the development of China characters tends to create new words instead of new words.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is one of the Chinese characters, and it is also the oldest mature character in China. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is also called Wen Qi, tortoise shell or tortoise shell animal bone. After divination with tortoise shell and animal bones, Shang people used knives to engrave the divination time, the names of the diviners and the things they divined, and some even engraved the good and bad luck that came true a few days later. However, the specific situation varies with the stage of Oracle bones. Generally speaking, the inscriptions in Wuding period are the most complete and the most abundant in existence. Scholars call this kind of record Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and this kind of writing is Oracle Bone Inscriptions. A large number of Oracle bones with Oracle Bone Inscriptions were unearthed in Yin Ruins, all of which have the basic structure of Chinese characters. A large number of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and inscriptions not only recorded the political, economic, military, meteorological and divination situation at that time, but also marked the maturity of the writing. The picture shows Oracle Bone Inscriptions carved on the tortoise shell.

introduce

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is mainly found in Yin Ruins in Anyang, Henan Province. Up to now, there are about 654.38+054,000 written Oracle bones unearthed. Among them, Chinese mainland has more than 97,600 pieces, Taiwan Province Province has more than 30,200 pieces, and Hong Kong has 89 pieces. Due to war and commercial factors, more than 26,700 pieces have been scattered overseas to Japan, the United States, Britain, Canada, France, the former Soviet Union, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden 12 countries. Among them, when the Japanese invaded China, they systematically excavated in Yin Ruins, so they collected the most, with more than 12000 pieces. At present, more than 500 scholars in the world specialize in Oracle Bone Inscriptions and have published more than 2,000 monographs.

Shang and Zhou Dynasties were very superstitious. Kings in Shang and Zhou Dynasties often used Oracle Bone Inscriptions to predict good or bad luck, and engraved the things, time and results of divination on it, so Oracle Bone Inscriptions was also called Oracle bones. It covers politics, economy, military affairs, climate, culture and many other aspects, and is an important material for studying the history at that time.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions has about 4,500 words, about one third of which have been interpreted. According to research, pictographic characters, demonstrative characters, knowing characters and pictophonetic characters are used in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. In the application of word meaning, we can clearly see the method of metonymy. Pictophonetic characters account for about 25%. Today, pictophonetic characters account for about 90%.

Harmony in Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a symbol of the maturity of Chinese characters. Like cuneiform and hieroglyphics, it belongs to ideograph, and it is also the predecessor of the only ideograph used in the world at present. Its writing materials are generally tortoise bones, shoulder blades of cattle, and can also be engraved on walls, wood products, stone tools and so on. , with a knife, Zhu Shu, Mo Shu. China existed for a long time in ancient times. In the late Spring and Autumn Period, Chinese characters were separated from Oracle Bone Inscriptions and gradually lost their recognition, but they were generally sold to drug dealers as "keels" for medicinal purposes. It was not until 1899 (twenty-five years of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty) that it was accidentally discovered by epigraphist Wang and verified as a relic of Shang and Zhou Dynasties.

In the early years of the Republic of China, the collected Oracle Bone Inscriptions was divided into five periods: Wuding era in Pan Geng, Zujia era in Zu Geng, Bingxin Kangding era, Wuyi Wen Ding era and the first emperor Di Xin era. After studying Oracle bone inscriptions, Guo Moruo thinks that Oracle bone inscriptions need at least 1500 years from the initial stage to maturity.

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Oracle Bone Inscriptions, mainly referring to Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins, is a script carved (or written) by the royal family on tortoise shells and animal bones for divination in the late Shang Dynasty (14 ~1century). It is the earliest and most complete ancient Chinese character discovered by China.

In the 25th year of Guangxu reign in Qing Dynasty (1899), Oracle Bone Inscriptions was first known by epigraphist Wang and bought at a high price. In the following ten years, Wang Xiang, Meng, Liu E, Luo Zhenyu, and Farlian of the United States successively searched for Oracle bones, Shouling and the United Kingdom, Taifu Lin of Japan, and Canadian ones. , * * * got tens of thousands of pieces of Oracle bones. From 1928 to 1937, the archaeological team of the Institute of History and Linguistics of Academia Sinica conducted 15 planned excavations of Yin Ruins, and obtained about 25,000 pieces of Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Since then, Oracle bones have been unearthed in Yin Ruins. 1973, the Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences excavated more than 4,000 pieces of Oracle bones in Xiaotun South, Anyang, Henan. In addition to the Yin Ruins, two inscribed Oracle Bone Inscriptions pieces were also found in Zhengzhou 1953 and 1954 sites in the middle of Shang Dynasty. /kloc-since 0/954, about 300 inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells have been unearthed in Hongdong, Shaanxi, Changping, Zhouyuan Fenghao Site and Feng Chu, Qishan, Shaanxi.

Since the first discovery of Oracle bones, Chinese mainland, Taiwan Province Province, Hong Kong and Macao, Japan, the United States, Britain, Canada, France, the Soviet Union, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and other countries have unearthed150,000 pieces of Oracle bones, and South Korea also has collections.

Most of the unearthed Oracle bone inscriptions have been recorded and published, such as Liu E's Tieyun Hiding a Turtle, Luo Zhenyu's Yinxu Shuqi and Yinxu Shuqi Later Edition, James Mellon Menzies's Yinxu Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Lin Taifu's Tortoise and Beast Bone Essays, and Wang Xiang's Essays on Stan Yin Qi. Later, there were Dong Zuobin's A Collection of Yin Ruins and A Collection of Yin Ruins, and Hu Houxuan's A Collection of Newly Acquired Oracle Bones in Nanjing and Shanghai after World War II. After World War II, there were records of Oracle bones seen in the north and south, and Oracle bones were newly acquired in Beijing and Tianjin after World War II. The Collection of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, edited by Guo Moruo and Hu Houxuan, systematically and scientifically sorted out hundreds of thousands of pieces of Oracle bones found in Oracle Bone Inscriptions in recent 80 years, collected all the unearthed Oracle bones extensively and classified them by stages. * * * collected about 40,000 pieces of Oracle bones and compiled them into thirteen volumes, which provided systematic data for the study of Oracle bones and Shang history. In addition, 1973 Oracle bones unearthed in xiaotun south have been included in the book xiaotun south Oracle bones. Oracle bones in Japan, Canada, the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, Germany and other countries have also been recorded and published respectively.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a relatively mature character, and the main methods of word formation are pictographic characters, pictographic characters and phonetic characters. Today's Chinese characters are still pictographs based on pictographs, so Oracle Bone Inscriptions has the basic form of Chinese character structure in later generations. Grammatically, there are nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and their sentence patterns and structural order are basically consistent with later grammars.

Because Shang Wang knew everything, Oracle Bone Inscriptions's content involved all fields of Shang society. According to the information about the business class and country in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, slaves and civilians in Shang Dynasty were composed of people with different identities, such as the masses, farmers, Qiang people, servants, Xi people and concubines. Slave owners and nobles include former governors and their spouses, such as Yan, Mu, Zi Ruzi and Tuzi. Officials at all levels include ministers, Yin, Shi and dogs. The army has divisions, brigades, etc. Penalties include beheading, beheading and setting up a prison. Oracle Bone Inscriptions also recorded the human sacrifice in Shang Dynasty, which is directly related to solving the social nature of Shang Dynasty. The Shang Dynasty often waged wars with foreign countries, and the conquered countries paid tribute to the Shang Dynasty. In Oracle bone inscriptions, it is often recorded that families have come and entered horses, cattle, sheep and turtles.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions was a rich social means of production in Shang Dynasty. In agriculture, there are records of plowing and ploughing fields, as well as the names of various crops such as millet, millet, wheat, thunder and rice. The king is concerned about the abundance and regret of agricultural harvest, reducing the impact on agricultural harvest, and often makes predictions of setting up millet, saving millet, praying for the new year and telling autumn. Horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, dogs and tapirs in animal husbandry. They are all recorded, and there are a large number of livestock and special stables. A large number of cattle and sheep are often used for sacrifice. Fishing and hunting still played a certain role in the social life of Shang Dynasty. The prey recorded in Oracle Bone Inscriptions include deer, elk, tapir, elephant, tiger, fox, fish and various birds. Hunting methods include wild, hunting, chasing, trapping and shooting. There are also commercial and transportation information about shellfish, friends, nobles, ships, cars and even transportation systems in Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions also enriched the ideological and cultural content of Shang Dynasty. In the astronomical calendar, there are solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, birds and stars, new stars and big stars. , and leap month data such as March and Shi Shuo at different time periods every day. In meteorology, there are many records about rain forecast, wind forecast, changing sun, clouds, thunder, hail, snow and rainbow. There are medical records of head diseases, dental diseases, nasal diseases, speech diseases, elbow diseases, foot diseases, heel diseases and other diseases, and there are also records about fertility, which shows that the expected date of delivery can be accurately inferred at that time.

The king is still a ghost, who can predict everything. The content of divination is mostly centered on the king. On the issues of concern, such as offering sacrifices to ancestors and natural gods, paying attention to wind, rain, water, celestial phenomena, farming, years of success, etc., virgins ask God, ghosts and gods, the first male and the first king, etc. , so as to predict good or bad, hope to be guaranteed. The divination materials are mostly tortoise shell (and a small amount of back shell) and cattle scapula, which are corrected before use and drilled on the back (and a small amount of cattle scapula on the front). In Oracle inscriptions, Oracle bones are burned with fire before drilling holes in the back, and there are "Bu"-shaped cracks in the front to judge good or bad luck. After divination, record the divination on the Oracle Bone Inscriptions.