The Study On The Ideographic Nature Of Chinese Characters'Radical

It is nearly two thousand years since Xushen of the Eastern Han Dynasty compiled Shuowen Jiezi and for the first time created the radical in Shuowen Jiezi. From the time it appeared, ideographic nature and indexing are dual function of radical. Radical of philology principles is intended to focus on ideographic nature and radical of indexing principles lays emphasis on indexing. Radical of philology principles is unexceptionally ideographic. Radical of indexing principles has a main purpose, that is indexing, but it mainly succeeds to radical of philology principles. The link between historically heritable radical and significance should not be overlooked. Even if the radical lost its original meaning, the relationship of its pronunciation and meaning has been fixed. Thus, the majority of radical of indexing principles is still ideographic. It is possible to analyze the ideographic nature of radical in dictionaries from Shuowen Jiezi to Xinhua Dictionary. For a variety of reasons, the researches on the ideographic nature of radical focus on the radical of Shuowen Jiezi, but few on the radical of indexing principles. This article aims at discussing the ideographic nature of indexing principles' radical.The article is divided into three parts. Part I first affirms Chinese characters' ideographic nature. Chinese characters' ideographic nature must be identified before the study of ideographic nature is possible as the graphic forms of the Chinese characters. Part II reviews the researches on the ideographic nature of radical. It explores the origins and characteristics of the ideographic nature of radical from the structure of Chinese characters. And through inspecting the process of supplement, abridgement, mergence and the changes in the type, this part explores the diachronic changes of the ideographic nature of radical. In addition, the mapping of the ideographic nature of radial is also introduced. Part III introduces the value of practical application in ideographic nature of radical.Ideographic nature of radical strengthens the link of Chinese characters' font and meaning. It also enhances the possibility to analyze the structure of Chinese characters. So it provides help in the teaching of Chinese characters, analysis of the structure of Chinese characters, standardization of Chinese characters and reform of Chinese characters' radial. Analyzing ideographic nature of radical is meaningful. I hope the research on the ideographic nature of radical would be further and wider to maximize the use of modern Chinese characters.