Chinese character classification

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All Chinese character are logograms, but there are several derivative types. These include a handful which are pictographic (象形 pinyin: xiàngxíng) in origin, and a number which are ideographic (指事 zhǐshì) in origin, but the vast majority originated as phono-semantic compounds (形聲 xíngshēng). In older literature, Chinese characters in general may be referred to as ideograms, due to the misconception that characters represent ideas directly, whereas in fact they do so only through association with the spoken word (Hansen 1993).

1 Traditional classification
2 Modern classifications
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Traditional classification

Traditional Chinese lexicography divided characters into six categories (六書 liùshū "Six Writings"), which are described below. This classification is often attributed to Xu Shen's second century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, but it has been dated earlier. The first mention is in the work Zhou Li of the late Zhou dynasty, and the six types are listed in the Hanshu of the first century CE, and in Zheng Zhong (鄭眾) quoted by Zheng Xuan (鄭玄) in his first-century commentary of Zhou Li, although the details vary. The traditional classification is still taught but is no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice. Some categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two refer to usage. For this reason, some modern scholars view them as six principles of character formation rather than six types of characters.

The earliest significant, extant corpus of Chinese characters is found on turtle shells and the bones of livestock, chiefly the scapula of oxen, for use in pyromancy, a form of divination. These ancient characters are called oracle bone script. Roughly a quarter of these characters are pictograms while the rest are either phono-semantic compounds or compound ideograms. Despite millennia of change in shape, usage and meaning, a few of these characters remain recognizable to the modern reader of Chinese.

At present, more than 90% of Chinese characters are phono-semantic compounds, constructed out of elements intended provide clues to both the meaning and the pronunciation. However, as both the meanings and pronunciations of the characters have changed over time, these components are no longer reliable guides to either meaning or pronunciation. The failure to recognize the historical and etymological role of these components often leads to misclassification and folk etymology. A study of the earliest sources (the oracle bones script and the Zhou-dynasty bronze script) is often necessary for an understanding of the true composition and etymology of any particular character. Reconstructing Middle and Old Chinese phonology from the clues present in characters is part of Chinese historical linguistics. In Chinese, it is called Yinyunxue (音韻學 "Studies of sounds and rimes").

[edit] Pictograms

象形 xiàng xíng "form imitation"

Roughly 600 Chinese characters are pictograms—stylised drawings of the objects they represent. These are generally among the oldest characters. A few, indicated below with their earliest forms, date back to oracle bones from the twelfth century BCE.

These pictograms became progressively more stylized and lost their pictographic flavor, especially as they made the transition from the oracle bone script to the Seal Script of the Eastern Zhou, but also to a lesser extent in the transition to the clerical script of the Han Dynasty. The table below summarises the evolution of a few Chinese pictographic characters. Where no modern simplified form is provided, it is identical to the traditional character.

Oracle Bone Script	Seal Script	Clerical Script	Semi-Cursive Script	Cursive Script	Regular Script (Traditional)	Regular Script (Simplified)	Pinyin	Meaning
						—	rì	Sun
						—	yuè	Moon
						—	shān	Mountain
						—	shuǐ	Water
						—	yǚ	Rain
						—	mù	Wood
						—	hé	Rice Plant
						—	rén	Man
						—	nǚ	Woman
						—	mǔ	Mother
						—	mù	Eye
						—	niú	Cow
						—	yáng	Goat
							mǎ	Horse
							niǎo	Bird
							guī	Tortoise
							lóng	Chinese Dragon
							fèng	Chinese Phoenix

N.B.:

女 nǚ is a stylised drawing of a woman kneeling in profile. In the oracle bone, bronze and seal scripts, the torso vertically bisects the crossed arms; in the clerical and standard scripts, the graph is rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise so that the hands, not the feet, are pointed downward.
水 shuǐ "water" represents the lines of a flowing river.

[edit] Ideograms

指事 zhǐ shì "indication"

Ideograms express an abstract idea through an iconic form. This includes iconic modification of pictogram, such as added dots or lines to indicate which part or action is intended. In the examples below, abstract notions like numbers are represented by a matching number of strokes and the parts of trees are represented by marking them on a pictogram of a tree.

Character	一	二	三	上	下	本	末
Pinyin	yī	èr	sān	shàng	xià	běn	mò
Gloss	one	two	three	up	below	root	apex

N.B.:

本 běn, "root" - a tree (木 mù) with the base indicated by an extra stroke.
末 mò, "apex" - the reverse of 本 (běn), a tree with the top highlighted by an extra stroke.

[edit] Ideogrammic compounds

會意 huì yì "joined meaning"

In ideogrammic compounds, also called associative compounds or logical aggregates, two or more pictographic or ideographic characters are combined to suggest a third meaning. For example, the character 各 gè originally meant "to arrive". (It was long ago borrowed for "each".) The oracle-bone form of this compound, very similar to the modern glyph, shows 夂 a foot (the inverted form of 止 zhǐ, originally a foot) at a 凵 or 口 walled object, perhaps a dwelling. The meaning of "arrive" is thus suggested jointly, as a footstep at the door. As another example, the character 明, composed of the characters for the sun and the moon, means "bright".

As these characters became more stylized over time, one or more of the components was often compressed or abbreviated. For example, the character 人 "human" was reduced to 亻, 水 "water" to 氵, and 艸 "grass" to 艹.

A few further examples:

木×2 = 林 lín	木×3 = 森 sēn	人+木 = 休 xiū
two trees → grove	three trees → forest	a man leaning against a tree → rest

隹+木 = 集 jí	隹×2 +又= 雙 shuāng	女+子 = 好 hǎo	手+木 = 采 (採) cǎi
a bird on a tree* → gather together	two birds in the right hand → pair	a girl with a boy → good	a hand on a bush → harvest

日+月 = 明 míng	木×2+火 = 焚 fén	禾+火 = 秋 qiū
sun and moon → bright	fire under woods → burn	grain and fire → Autumn

Note: Earlier forms of the character 集 ("gather together") show three birds (隹) on a tree.

[edit] Phono-semantic compound characters

形聲 xíng shēng "form and sound"

The majority of Chinese characters by far—over 90%—were created by combining a character with approximately the correct pronunciation (the phonetic element, or rebus, similar to a phonetic complement) with one of a limited number of characters which supplied an element of the meaning (the semantic element or "radical", a determinative by which one would look up the character in a dictionary). Such compounds remedied the difficulty of using iconic forms to represent physically similar objects (e.g., dogs versus wolves), actions, and abstract notions, without creating undue homophony. Phono-semantic compound had already appeared by the time of the Shang Dynasty oracle bone script.

As an example, a verb meaning "to wash one's hair" is pronounced mù. Although difficult to draw, it happens to sound the same as the word mù "tree", which was written with the simple pictograph 木. The verb mù could simply have been written 木, like "tree", but to disambiguate, it was combined with the character for "water", giving some idea of the meaning. The resulting character eventually came to be written 沐 mù "to wash one's hair". Similarly, the water radical was combined with 林 lín "woods" to produce 淋 lín "to pour".

Radical	Rebus	Compound
氵 water	木 mù	沐 mù "to wash one's hair"
氵 water	林 lín	淋 lín "to pour"

However, the phonetic component is not always as meaningless as this example would suggest. Phonetic components were sometimes chosen that were compatible semantically as well as phonetically. It was also often the case that the radical merely constrained the meaning of a word which already had several. 菜 cài "vegetable" is a case in point. The radical 艹 for plants was combined with 采 cǎi "harvest". However, 采 cǎi does not merely provide the pronunciation. In classical texts it was also used to mean "vegetable". That is, 采 underwent semantic extension from "harvest" to "vegetable", and the addition of 艹 merely specified that the latter meaning was to be understood.

Radical	Rebus	Compound
艹 plant	采 cǎi "harvest, vegetable"	菜 cài "vegetable"

Some additional examples:

Radical	Rebus	Compound
扌 hand	白 bái	拍 pái "to clap, to hit"
穴 to dig into	九 jiǔ	究 jiū "to investigate"
日 sun	央 yāng	映 yìng "reflection"

Originally characters sharing the same phonetic had similar readings, though they have now diverged substantially. Linguists rely heavily on this fact to reconstruct the sounds of Old Chinese. When people try to read a two-part character of which they are ignorant, they will typically follow the folk wisdom of you bian du bian (有邊讀邊) "read the side" and take one component to be a phonetic, which often results in errors.

Since the phonetic elements of many characters no longer accurately represent their pronunciations, when the People's Republic of China simplified they characters, they often substituted a phonetic that was not only simpler to write, but more accurate for a modern reading as well. (Note for the example that many radicals were simplified as well, usually by standardizing cursive forms.)

Traditional character
Radical	Rebus	Compound
金 metal	童 tōng	鐘 zhōng "bell"

Simplified character
New rebus	New compound
中 zhōng	钟 zhōng

[edit] Rebus characters

假借 jiǎ jiè "borrowing"

Jiajie are characters that are "borrowed" to write another homophonous or near-homophonous morpheme, as in English "4ever" for "forever". For example, the character 來 was a pictogram of the wheat plant and originally meant *mloi "wheat". As this was similar to the Old Chinese word *mlois "to come", 來 was also used to write that verb. Eventually the more common use, the verb "to come", became established as the default reading of the character 來, and a new character was devised for "wheat", 麥. (The modern pronunciations are lái and mài.) When a character is used this way, it is called a jiajiezi (假借字 "borrowed character"), or a phonetic loan character.

As in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform, early Chinese characters were used as rebus to express the abstract meanings that were not easily depicted. Thus many characters stood for more than one word. In some cases the rebus would take over completely, and a new character would be created for the original meaning, usually by modifying the original character with a radical (determinative). This process of disambiguation is the source of phono-semantic compound characters.

Examples of *jiajie*
Pictograph or ideograph	Original meaning	Rebus	New character for original meaning
四	sì "nostrils"	sì "four"	泗 (mucous; sniffle)
枼	yè "leaf"	yè "flat, thin"	葉
北	bèi "back (of the body)"	běi "north"	背
要	yāo "waist"	yào "to want"	腰
少	shā "sand"	shǎo "few"	沙 and 砂
永 yǒng "swim"	yǒng "forever"	泳

The term jiajie dates to the Han Dynasty. The related term tongjia (通假 tōngjiǎ "interchangeable borrowing") is first attested from the Ming Dynasty. The two terms are commonly used as synonyms, but there is a distinction between jiajiezi being a rebus for a word that did not originally have a character, such as using 東 "a bag tied at both ends"[1] for dōng "east", and tongjia being a rebus that replaces an existing character, such as using 蚤 zǎo "flea" for 早 zǎo "early".

The practice of tongjia creates one of the most notorious diffculties in the reading of ancient Chinese, particularly pre-Qin texts. The origins of many Chinese characters are debated.

[edit] Transformed cognates

轉注 zhuǎn zhù "reciprocal meaning"

This classification is of purely historical value, and is the least understood of the liushu principles of character formation. It may refer to characters which have similar meanings and often the same etymological root, but which have diverged in pronunciation and meaning. The English words chance and cadence would fit this pattern, as they share a common Latin root, cadentia "to fall". If English were written the way Chinese is, these two words might have similar characters.

The characters 老 lǎo "old" and 考 kǎo "a test" are the most commonly cited example. The words derive from a common etymological root (approximately *klao’), and the character differ only in the modification of one part.

[edit] Modern classifications

The liushu had been the standard classification scheme for Chinese characters since Xu Shen's time. Generations of scholars modified it without challenging the basic concepts. Tang Lan (唐蘭) (1902-1979) was the first to dismiss liushu, offering his own sanshu (三書 "Three Principles of Character Formation"), namely xiangxing (象形 "form-representing"), xiangyi (象意 "meaning-representing") and xingsheng (形聲 "meaning-sound"). This classification was later criticised by Chen Mengjia (陳夢家) (1911-1966) and Qiu Xigui. Both Chen and Qiu offered their own sanshu. (Qiu 2000:chp. 6.3)

[edit] References

Boltz, William G. (1994). The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System. American Oriental Series, vol. 78. American Oriental Society, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. ISBN 0-940490-78-1.
DeFrancis, John (1984). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6.
_____(1989). Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 0-8248-1207-7.
Hansen, Chad (1993). "Chinese Ideographs and Western Ideas," The Journal of Asian Studies 52.2:373-399.
Qiu Xigui (裘錫圭) (2000). Chinese Writing. Tran. Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman. Early China Special Monograph Series No. 4. Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. ISBN 1-55729-071-7.
Wang Hongyuan (1993). The Origins of Chinese characters. Beijing: Sinolingua. ISBN 978-7-80052-243-7.
Woon, Wee Lee (雲惟利) (1987). Chinese Writing: Its Origin and Evolution (漢字的原始和演變), originally published by the University of East Asia, Macau (no ISBN).