The Study On The Phonetic Characters Of Shanghai Museum Bamboo Slips

This paper is based on Book 1--8 of Bamboo Slips of the Warring State Chu collected in Shanghai Museum(Bamboo Slips is for short), which is edited by Ma Chengyuan. It also consults Sound System of Words in Bamboo Slips of The Warring State Chu collected in Shanghai Museum(1--8),written by Xu Zaiguo, and some other relevant text series. The paper has classified arrangement and component analysis of the pictophonetic characters in Bamboo Slips. It is divided into 4 chapters.The first chapter "Introduction" briefly introduces the excavation and arrangement of the materials in this paper, the overview of the research status of Bamboo Slips and its pictophonetic characters, and the research meaning and research methods of the paper. It also defines the pictophonetic characters in the book and determines the principle of arrangement.The second chapter "Structure Type of Bamboo Slips” has a comprehensive analysis of the structure type of the pictophonetic characters in Bamboo Slips. Starting from the amount and nature of its components, the pictophonetic characters are divided into typical pictophonetic characters, sub-typical pictophonetic characters and atypical pictophonetic characters. Typical pictophonetic characters refer to words which have one meaning with one sound. It also can be divided into 7 types: meaning on sound’s left, sound on meaning’s left, meaning on sound’s top, sound on meaning’s top, meaning surrounding sound, meaning in the corner, sound in the corner. Sub-typical pictophonetic characters consist of phonetic component and distinctive component, which cannot express a meaning. Atypical pictophonetic characters refer to special types of pictophonetic characters, like multi form or multi sound, ellipsis of pictograph or phonetic sign, pictophonetic characters which phonetic sign also can express a meaning. I explain each structure type combining with examples in Bamboo Slips.The third chapter is “Analysis of the Isomerization of Pictophonetic Characters in Bamboo Slips”. Combining relevant theories and examples in Bamboo Slips, it has the analysis of the isomeric characters in Bamboo Slips. The isomeric characters can be divided into two types: isomerization in pictophonetic system, isomerization between pictophonetic and ideographic system. Isomerization in pictophonetic system can be divided into several types: semantic components change, phonetic components change, combinatorial position of components change, semantic components and phonetic components both change, increase the components; isomerization between pictophonetic and ideographic system can be divided into 3 types: adding components on ideograms, turning semantic components into phonetic components and the deformation of the whole class.The fourth chapter “Analysis of the Component Function of Pictophonetic Characters in Bamboo Slips” is the last chapter. It mainly analyzes component function of pictophonetic characters in Bamboo Slips. The function of the component includes function of showing sound, function of showing meaning(indicating source), function of classification, function of distinction. I explain the question from sound-showing component, meaning-showing component and discriminative component.The last part of the paper is “Conclusion”, which summarizes the all contents. The font list of pictophonetic characters in Bamboo Slips is in “Appendix”.