Character Formation With Plant Radicals In The General Service List Of Standard Chinese Characters(Band1):A Study From A Lexicographical Perspective

There are two main reasons why learners of Chinese find Chinese characters difficult to learn.First,the number of Chinese characters is huge,and most of them are graphologically complex;second,few current learner’s dictionaries provide systematic information about character formation.The aim of this study is to provide an intermediate Chinese-English pedagogical dictionary with information about character formation with plant radicals.I first identified 27 unitary radicals signifying plants from Band 1 of the General Service List of Standard Chinese Characters(3500 in all),including 11 signifying different plants:木,屮,禾,竹,米,(?),来(来),瓜,韭,黍,(?),桑;8 signifying parts of plants:米,(?),果,枼,朿,(?),不,黍;and 8 signifying various states of plants:生,丰,屯,未,端,朵,齐(齐),丩.With these radicals and the 623 characters they help to form and drawing on the results of previous relevant studies in graphology and lexicography,this thesis traces the formal evolution of each of these characters,determines its construction types,and provides information about its formation in English.The results of this study reveals that木 is the most productive radical,found in 193 characters;while 桑,the least productive,in only 1.Functionally,very productive plant radicals are mainly pictograms and ideograms whereas the less productive ones serve mainly as phonograms:木,屮 and 米 are mainly pictograms in 116,83 and 11 characters respectively;(?)and(?)are only pictograms in 2 characters;竹 and 禾are mainly ideograms in 42 and 29 characters respectively;黍 and 韭 are only ideograms in 3 characters;生,丰,,端,and 不 serve mainly as phonograms in 17 characters and 齐,桑,果,枼/世,粤,黍,屯,未,朵 only as phonograms in 37 characters.The vast majority of the characters the 27 plant radicals directly help to form also serve as phonograms in indirect character formation.Semantically,11 radicals and half of the characters containing 木 and 艹 depict plants that are edible or partly edible;characters such as 棉 and 麻 mainly signify fabrics;and characters with木,艹 and竹 are often related to shelter,transport and tools.From a cognitive perspective,we can see that the radicals depicting plants reflect the ancients’categorization of objects based on their morphological features,that some of the basic concepts,such as 本 and 末,are signified by metaphor,and some of the temporal concepts,such as 秋 and 年,are conveyed by event metonymy.This study provides both graphological information about plant radicals for the said dictionary and a new approach and resources for the teaching of Chinese characters.