Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Phonetic compounds (形聲)
This is because almost all the words with mouth (口字旁的字) are created by this method of “phonetic compounds”. So, here is a more detailed explanation.
A phonetic compound consists of a radical (意符) and phonetic (聲符). The radical indicates its semantic field and the phonetic its pronunciation. For example, phonetic compounds with 木 (tree) as the radical like 松 (pine), 柏 (cypress), 桃 (peach) are all names of trees; those 手 (hand) as the radical like 推 (push), 拉 (pull), 提 (lift), 按 (press) all refer to actions performed by the hand. However, the radical only shows the general semantic class of the character, not its specific meaning. The specific meanings of the characters sharing the same radical are differentiated by the phonetics they each have. The phonetics in some phonetic compounds may also be semantical, e.g. the phonetic 取 in 娶 is also meaningful in the sense of “take”, hence the name ideographic-phonetic compounds. But as far as the majority of phonetic compounds are concerned, the phonetic is only phonetical, not semantical. For example, the phonetics 工 and 可 in 江and 河 respectively are only indicative of their pronunciations, and have nothing to do with their meanings.
Compared with pictography, indication and ideography, phonetic compounding is more flexible. There are many objects and abstract ideas which are difficult to express through pictography or ideography. For example, 鳥 is the general term for birds, but there are tens of thousands types of birds in the world, and it is impossible to differentiate each of them by way of pictography or ideography. In contrast this is easily achieved in phonetic compounding by adding different phonetics to radical 鳥, e.g. 鴿 (pigeon), 鶴 (crane), 雞 (chicken), 鵠 (swan). Thus there is an enormous number of phonetic compounds in Chinese, and this number is growing larger and larger in the modern period. Statistics shows that phonetic compounds accounted for 80% of the total characters in the Origin of Chinese Characters (說文解字) of the Han Dynasty, 88% in Aspects of the Six Categories of Chinese Characters (六書略) of the Song Dynasty and 90% in Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典) of the Qing Dynasty. In the modern simplified form currently in use, phonetic compounds make up an even larger percent.
A phonetic compound consists of a radical (意符) and phonetic (聲符). The radical indicates its semantic field and the phonetic its pronunciation. For example, phonetic compounds with 木 (tree) as the radical like 松 (pine), 柏 (cypress), 桃 (peach) are all names of trees; those 手 (hand) as the radical like 推 (push), 拉 (pull), 提 (lift), 按 (press) all refer to actions performed by the hand. However, the radical only shows the general semantic class of the character, not its specific meaning. The specific meanings of the characters sharing the same radical are differentiated by the phonetics they each have. The phonetics in some phonetic compounds may also be semantical, e.g. the phonetic 取 in 娶 is also meaningful in the sense of “take”, hence the name ideographic-phonetic compounds. But as far as the majority of phonetic compounds are concerned, the phonetic is only phonetical, not semantical. For example, the phonetics 工 and 可 in 江and 河 respectively are only indicative of their pronunciations, and have nothing to do with their meanings.
Compared with pictography, indication and ideography, phonetic compounding is more flexible. There are many objects and abstract ideas which are difficult to express through pictography or ideography. For example, 鳥 is the general term for birds, but there are tens of thousands types of birds in the world, and it is impossible to differentiate each of them by way of pictography or ideography. In contrast this is easily achieved in phonetic compounding by adding different phonetics to radical 鳥, e.g. 鴿 (pigeon), 鶴 (crane), 雞 (chicken), 鵠 (swan). Thus there is an enormous number of phonetic compounds in Chinese, and this number is growing larger and larger in the modern period. Statistics shows that phonetic compounds accounted for 80% of the total characters in the Origin of Chinese Characters (說文解字) of the Han Dynasty, 88% in Aspects of the Six Categories of Chinese Characters (六書略) of the Song Dynasty and 90% in Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典) of the Qing Dynasty. In the modern simplified form currently in use, phonetic compounds make up an even larger percent.
// posted by Hei Shing @ 8:06 PM 
