ATentativeRefutationontheLanguageArbitrarinessFromthePerspectiveoftheSixCategoriesofChineseCharacter

2022-09-11

1 Introduction

Language is a symbol system which is unique to human beings.It is not rare when a child asked his/her teachers or parents questions like:"Why we have to call桌子 (desk) "[zhuozi]"instead of others?Why it is spelled like that?"And usually the answer given to that question may probably be that:"Because it is conventional, people made it a rule."However, is that a truth?Actually the argument between whether language is arbitrary or not can be traced back to ancient Greece, at which time a lot of scholars and philosophers have equal say in the theory of arbitrariness and the belief of iconicity.

2 Arbitrariness of Language

In general, the arbitrariness holds that there is“an arbitrary, rather than a natural, i.e.Iconical relationship”between the signifer and the signified (Bussmann 2000:32;Yule 1996:21) .Saussure, the founder of modern linguistics, put forward his principle of arbitrariness that the relationship between signifier and signified are arbitrary.Hu Zhuanglin (2000) interprets arbitrariness as“there is no motivation between the form and its meaning”.In this article, the author’s argumentation is based on Hu Zhuanglin’s interpretation.

3 The Six Categories of Chinese Characters

"The six categories of Chinese characters", a theory that ancient Chinese people used to describe and explain how Chinese characters is created.The first four categories are the theory of creating words and the last two are theory of using words.Hence, the author adopts the first four categories to show how the form of Chinese characters are relational to their meaning.

3.1 Pictographic Principle

The first category is the pictographic principle.According to the pictographic principle, some Chinese characters are initially created by imitating the real objects.Take the Chinese character"水" (water) for instance.As we all know, the water in nature has ripples.So initially, we can find the form on甲骨文 (inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells) as three curving lines arranged vertically, the middle long curving line stands for the main shape of the river and the other two curving lines the flowing water.And then in金文 (inscriptions on ancient bronze objects) the form stayed almost the same, however, in小篆 (a small seal style of calligraphy) a small changing of form were found, the curving line on each side were changed into more obvious curving lines.And then gradually the form of the character began to abstract the pictographic word form, finally we find the form“水”in today's use.The evolution of“水”are as following:

The English equivalent is"water".As is known that the English letter was originated from Phoenicia alphabet which is a rather pictographic alphabet.As it still remained unsure what each letter exactly refers to, the author would like to adopt one of the many assumptions saying that the letter"w"is an imitation of the form of ripples of water.Unlike its Chinese equivalent, which draw three curving lines vertically, the letter"w"draws a curving line horizontally to stand for the water wave.Even today, we can still find a lot of English words contain the letter"w"that have something to do with"water", such as"wash", "weep", "well"and"wave"ect.

Another example of pictograph is the Chinese character“月” (moon) .It was also created by imitating the form of the crescent.Because in a year, the time when crescent appears in the sky is much longer than the time of a full moon shows.And the evolution of form is as followings:

The Chinese character“山”is also a creation of imitating the outline of a mountain.

The above three characters are all created by the imitation of natural objects, the following is an example of the pictograhic character“刀” (knife) which is created through imitating the form of a knife in the beginning.

The pictographs has its own limitations, for a lot of abstract things or complicated objects are unable to draw a copy.

3.2 Self-explaining Principle

Apart from the pictographs, another way to create Chinese characters is self-explaining.This way of creating characters is adding some marks on the pictographs.Take the character“刃” (the edge of a knife) for instance, it was created by adding a dot to the character“刀”and that point stands for the edge of the knife.Another character“凶”, the outside shape symblizes a concave terrain, and the inside form resembles that this place may trap people.Still, the form of the linguistic sign has some relation to do with its meaning.

3.3 Ideographic Principle

The third category is ideographic, which means two or more sinographems combined together to create one word.The character“伏” (to bend over) means to lower one's position or be submissive to something.I n金文 (inscriptions on ancient bronze objects) , it is written like this.The left side is a form of a man and the right sid e is a form of a dog in a lower position, so together it symbolized a dog lies on the feet of a man.

Another ideographic character“化” (change) means to change.The form on甲骨文 (inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells) is as.The character is a combination of two person positioned rever sed, referring that people suddenly changed upward or suddenly downward.It indicates the changing nature of everything, that everything is in a dynamic position.

3.4 Pictographic-phonetic Principle

The last one is the pictographic-phonetic character.As the name indicates, one part of the character stands for which category the character belongs to, while the other part stands for the sound.Take“樱” (cherry tree) for instance, the right side stands for a tree and the right side indicates the pronunciation of the character.Also“固” (to stabilize) with the outside pictographic form resembling the meaning of the character, the inside part"古"resembles how to pronounce the character.The character“骑”is another example, the right side resembles the sound of the character, the left side the pictographic one.

4 Conclusion

From all the examples above, it can be seen clearly that there is some connection between the linguistic signs and their meaning.Of course this article has limitations, the number of examples are too limited, it can't represent all the Chinese characters.However, just as more and more scholars have realized that there do exist some relationship between the object and the reality and that language is not arbitrary, hopefully, this article may add some valuable reference to the study of language iconicity field.

摘要：It has long been viewed that Saussure's principle of arbitrariness is a fundamental theory in modern linguistics.Up to now, some linguists and scholars have raised their doubts to Saussure's arbitrariness theory from different aspects.In this thesis, the author aims at using “ 六书 ” (The six categories of Chinese characters) to show that the creation of Chinese characters has some reasons and it was not 100% arbitrary between the forms of linguistic signs and their meaning.