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5) ‘semantic-phonetic compounds’ (or similar); these are by far the most common
category of Chinese characters.
3 Word-Families and the Chinese Script
Note: this section, which relies extensively on the work of Japanese scholar Tōdō Akiyasu,
involves much technical detail which many readers may not need; for such readers,
the brief entry ‘Phonetic with associated sense’ (see Section 8 below) is recommended
instead.
The application of the semantic-phonetic compounding principle led to a dramatic
increase in the total number of different graphs over time. As indicated above,
in semantic-phonetic compounds the phonetic element is the original element, and
a semantic marker is a later addition. An important point to note is that often a particular
element, while primarily phonetic, also carries a common thread of meaning
that can be seen in several or a number of different graphs. This reflects the existence
of words of related meaning and the same or similar pronunciation in early Chinese;
grouped together, such words are known as ‘word-families’. To give a relatively simple
example: the word written as ‘village; unit of linear measure’ is analyzed by
one scholar (Tōdō) as being made up of ‘field’ combined with ‘earth, ground’,
originally representing a word meaning fields divided up according to a grid system,
and then by extension ‘village’, representing a collection of nearby houses. This is
the first of a number of words and their graphs collected together in a word-family
having the core meaning ‘line, draw a line’. On this basis, we can think of ‘line, draw
a line’ as the associated sense of as opposed to its main meanings of ‘village’ and
as a unit measure for distance. The distinction is an important one. Another word
of the same linguistically reconstructed pronunciation is one for which Tōdō gives
the original meaning ‘lines / veins which are visible in marble’, written , with
(‘jade, precious / semi-precious stone’ in its abbreviated form without dot) added as
a determinative (semantic marker). ‘Regulate, reason’ is a figurative extension for
based on ‘drawing a line’ (a straight line), and this in turn is seen in other members
of the same word-family such as , taken by Tōdō as ‘lines’ combined with
‘garment’, giving the original meaning ‘striped inner cloth (i.e., lining) of garment’.
Words in the same word-family do not necessarily involve the same written element
as phonetic: in this same word-family as set up by Tōdō we find , in which not
but serves as the phonetic, taken as ‘lines in (sides of) body’, i.e., ‘ribs’.
Sometimes the same written element serves as phonetic, but with associated
senses which might at first glance appear to be different. The graph ‘resemble’
1490 (q.v.) is part of a word-family in Chinese set up by Tōdō as meaning ‘small;
scrape off ’. At first, functioned as a graph representing a range of words of similar
14 Introduction