1、论汉字的同音现象（On the homophone of Chinese characters）On the homophone of Chinese charactersChong Bing Qiu(I)The existence of homophones is not a unique phenomenon in Chinese, but it is true that there are more homophones in chinese. In the modern world, the more common English, there are also some lexica
2、l homonym phenomenon. Such as: EyeI, Forforefour, Hearhere, Ininn, Knowno, Meetmeat, Oroarore, Rightritewritewright, Sonsun, etc But their weight in the whole English vocabulary is negligible. Chinese is not. A total of more than 400 Chinese syllables, if the tone difference as different syllables t
3、o look at, only more than 1300, while the total number of more than fifty thousand in Chinese characters. Of course, the more than 50000 Chinese characters, including more than 40000 in the modern actually has been discontinued, can not consider them. If you use the eight thousand words collected in
4、 the general dictionary as the object of calculation, then there are also six homophones in each syllable. The distribution of homophone is unbalanced, and the homophone of some syllables goes beyond this average. Although the word is not equivalent to the word, most of the commonly used Chinese cha
5、racters constitute the root of modern Chinese polysyllabic words, and the number of Chinese characters that can be used independently is still quite large. In order to study the characteristics of Chinese, it is a question worth paying attention to.Western language scholars once held that Chinese wa
6、s an isolated language, a very low level of development. They also thought English was an inflected language, and that it was a highly developed language. As a matter of fact, modern English has some phenomena that are close to Chinese, such as the omission of the conjunction word “that“ in the comp
7、ound sentence, the omission of the infinitive, the omission of the to in front, and so on. Gao Benhan (Bernhard Karlgren) has pointed out that European languages, especially English, have the tendency to develop into Chinese, so he believes that Chinese is a highly evolved language. 1If you compare
8、them in Chinese and Japanese, then they are also two different kinds of languages, and there are more homophones in japanese. The reason, of course, is not that Japanese is an agglutinative language“. So, why do the two different types of languages exist in the case of more homonyms? Thats because C
9、hinese and Japanese have one thing in common, that is, they use Chinese characters. Therefore, it can be argued that there are more homophones, and this situation has nothing to do with the level of language development, but is related to the use of Chinese characters.Language is produced on the bas
10、is of language. It is the writing mark of language. But once the system of writing has been formed, it will also influence language. Wang Li said: “the evolution of the voice of the text has a certain impact, in turn, the formation of the text of the voice changes have also had a certain impact.“.“
11、2 the pronunciation of Chinese characters is determined by the Chinese language, but the characteristics of Chinese characters also have some influence on Chinese pronunciation. The phenomenon of homophone is an important aspect of this influence.(two)Chinese homonym is more or less an inherent phen
12、omenon, but a product of history.According to the study of Chinese by some scholars, we know that in Chinese there were more consonants in syllables in ancient times, so they could form many different syllables. At that time, the total vocabulary was less than that of modern times, so there were not
13、 many homonyms. Gao Benhan believed that the pronunciation of ancient Chinese characters was consonant cluster. 3 Wang Li said: “the voice of ancient Chinese is very complicated: consonants, vowel, consonant, are much richer than modern Mandarin, and also appears to be more complex than the middle.“
14、 4The pronunciation of ancient Chinese characters, plosive has four sets of T, t, D, d, which can be divided and voiceless, aspirated and unaspirated points. And some consonant initial consonants. Such as Gl, Kl, Bl, Pl. Consonant ending: M, N, Ng, P, T, K, B, D, but the tone is not formed depended
15、on G. “Book of Songs“ and “Chu Ci“ rhyme, but no traces can constitute a tonal antithesis.In the middle ages, the complex part differentiate into single consonant initials, voiced plosive began to disappear, - B, - D, - G, the turbidity of final consonants is gradually lost, and the tone is develope
16、d. With a flat up, into the four sound. The entering characters - P, - t, - K, the Qing lost sound as the coda.In modern Beijing dialect, except for M -, N -, L -, R - and these initials, the initial consonants of voiced consonants disappeared. Consonant ending Xu - N, - ng, lost everything. There i
17、s no tone, tone is divided into yin and yang two tones.The general tendency of the change of Chinese pronunciation is that the consonant in syllables is gradually reduced, and the combination of syllables is simplified. The phenomenon of homophone in Chinese characters has been increased. We can als
18、o find traces of this change in the status quo of homophones.In modern Chinese, there are three types of syllables with more pronounced homophones:A, J,Q, an, the initial system of certain syllables.Two, An, En, In, the final system of certain syllables.Three, some unit syllable, such as: Bo, Fu, Li
19、, Ge, Zhi, Yi, and so on.J -, q -, X -, initials in homophone in ancient times and some dialects, some word is read into Z -, C -, s -, at the beginning, also is the difference between the so-called Jiantuan. Such as: sound, read Xiang, want to read siang. Now s - merge in X -. - the homophone in th
20、e vowel system of the n system; in ancient and southern certain dialect areas, some characters are read - M ending. Such as: difficult, read Nan, South, read nam. Now, M merged in N. Some units in syllable homophones, in ancient times and some dialects, some words read tone. Such as clothes, reading
21、, reading the tone, tone; floating, read the tone, tone Fu, reading. Now clothing a homonym, homophone Fufu.These circumstances show that the consonant sounds are fused and lost, so that the original sounds become homonyms. Obviously, this is the result of historical evolution.(three)How do you expl
22、ain this phenomenon?Chinese characters is semantic language, expression of Chinese characters pronunciation it is not exactly, Beijing dialect is just “ballpark“. This was so in ancient times. Chu has a ministers name, “Warring States“ as “Fen take Bosu“, “historical records“ for “Shen Bao xu“. Thes
23、e two names have the same vowel, and the initial consonants are likely to have consonant clusters. The ancient characters, which take some notes with sound, take some rhyme, only approximate pronunciation. In ancient times, the pronunciation of the borrowed words was not exactly the same. In the wor
24、ds of the exegesis, it was called “the turning of a sound“. There are many ancient Chinese disyllabic words and the same word but there are different kinds of writing, its pronunciation is often inconsistent. But actually its the same word. Such as: Wei Tuo, winding, Wei shift, meandering, leaning,
25、winding, Yu Yi, Ou Yu, and evil, imaginary evil. These are Chinese characters that can not accurately reflect the performance of spoken pronunciation. In order to make the approximate pronunciation not too far, it must maintain a “common divisor“, for example, to keep the same consonant or vowel cha
26、nges, the results may occur qiatouquwei. Similar changes have also been seen in western languages, which can be seen as universal. English to Kn, Wr, word, K, W, dont pronounce the word, to H - there are some words, pronunciation, to E at the end of the open syllable, almost all of the E are not pro
27、nounced. This phenomenon is more significant in French, even said plural suffix - s are not pronounced, plural same pronunciation.This is on the one hand, on the other hand, Chinese characters since libian, from the Han Dynasty, it had a boxy, no matter how the character strokes on paper, occupied a
28、rea, all equal, neat, independent and not connected. Read a word, a pause, then naturally need to be equal in time. In this way, can complement each other changes. Consonant read does not meet this requirement, one is the pronunciation. Changes in the larger, two is read for a long time, slowly to s
29、ingle consonant transformation. For the same reason, a consonant tail that is not tied to a vowel can be lost. And the tone is read quickly, the need to delay the pronunciation of time has changed. Thus, in most cases, the syllable is spelled only by a consonant and vowel, and at most with the N, ng
30、 and so on, which are tightly fused with the vowel. Sometimes there are no consonants, and all are made up of vowels. This is what Luo Changpei calls “xiuduan Kui, word will tone“. 5Here is not to say that Chinese characters from a pronunciation into another totally different pronunciation, and just
31、 say, because readers may change qiatouquwei Chinese characters, complement each other, so that the structure change of Chinese syllable phoneme. That is to say, the Chinese syllable tends to a single consonant structure (meaning that only one consonant in most syllables). This tendency to simplify
32、the phoneme structure will inevitably reduce the total number of syllables in Chinese, while many of the original pronunciations may become homonyms. In order to distinguish the new homonyms, so there was this: “birds shall be an aquarium with birds, fish, insects belonging to insects beside the gra
33、ss from two grass“. 6 these are homonyms that look and sound difficult to distinguish.Multi structure (in a syllable consonant consonant or consonant vowel group, before and after, which has more than two consonants) formed disappear and single consonant structure, and form a uniform Chinese charact
34、ers is associated. The uniform form of the glyph causes the phonetic structure to be uniform. Japanese Chinese characters Xundu did not obey the word of a sound principle. Thats because Chinese characters are used in conjunction with kana, and there is no uniform requirement. However, the single con
35、sonant structure of the pronunciation of Chinese characters not only increases the homophone phenomenon, but also makes it monotonous.Zhao Yuanren used 63 homonyms Shi to write a story about Shi Shis history of lion eating, but the 63 Shi words are different in tone. 7 we can see that the monotony o
36、f Chinese syllables must be compensated and developed in other ways. Wang Li said: “simplification of Chinese speech does not mean loss of Chinese. It has been compensated in other ways.“.“ 8 this compensation is the gradual formation of tones.The origin of tones may have originally been a taxonomic
37、 distinction between consonants and vowels. Because of the objective needs, only gradually developed. In this way, there are several points to follow:First, the difference between yin and Yang is derived from voiceless consonants and voiced consonants. Wang Li said: “the tone of the Yin and Yang and
38、 the initial oil there is a corresponding relationship, even tone characters to voiceless voiced tone words for the development of Yin Ping, Yang ping.“ 9 that is to say, consonant voicing into yin and Yang tune.Two, most Qusheng word is lost by B, D, voiced consonant ending words depended on G, int
39、o the. 10Three, “the essence of the problem is not the voice tone. Wang Li said, “the ancient tone is characterized by the length of vowels.“ Further more, “strictly speaking, it is not a question of pitch, it should not be considered a tone.“.“ 11 “RAM biography“ Zhuang male twenty-eight years: “sp
40、ring and Autumn Cutting for the guest, cutting mainly.“.“ What take note: “people are cutting off, reading of long words, Qi language; see the main cutting, cutting short read.“ Long words are called long vowels, while short ones are short vowels. That is to say, the difference with other tones, not
41、 in tone, but in the long vowels. The short vowel, consonant tail behind P, T, K, forming a closed syllable. This is the same as in English: I and I, u: and U. Similarly, in Japanese glottals, is equivalent to entering the Chinese characters. In the Japanese pronunciation of Chinese characters, only
42、 the difference does not distinguish it with tone, tone, also can explain this point.Four, Huang Jigang was determined to “ancient no up, only flat“. 12 contact “Gongyangzhuan“ on a paragraph, can make this explanation: ancient pronunciation can be divided into two categories, and with a vowel lengt
43、h as its mark. In the long vowel tone, short vowels in the fourth tone. The word “Ping“ is actually not the difference between tones.Five, from the flat into the Yin and Yang, it seems to add a tone, but also reduce a tone, in fact, the tone of Chinese characters eventually formed symbol. “Disappear
44、, does not mean that Chinese characters lose a tone, on the contrary, it illustrates the Chinese characters pronunciation, the original form by the vowel length to the classification, finally let in tone.From the above points, it can be seen that the tone is developed on the basis of different vowel
45、s and consonants, and the disappearance of the multi consonant structure is closely related to the formation of tones. It can be said that tone is a transformation and compensation in the disappearance of multi consonant structure, and it is also a unique creation in Chinese phonology. It makes Chin
46、ese phonology rich in musicality and makes Chinese Homophone more relaxed.(four)Both language and language are created and used by human beings. Therefore, the changes in language and writing do not happen by themselves, but are related to human history and social development. The tendency of Chines
47、e syllable toward single consonant is not only related to the characteristics of Chinese characters, but also to the social conditions and historical conditions of using Chinese characters. Moreover, it is the result of the development of Chinese characters through the development of Chinese charact
48、ers.Chinas feudal society is a long-term and typical historical stage. The people in the feudal society, almost deprived of the rights of the people and the master Chinese characters, oral English, and is considered to not put in good taste. In this way, the pronunciation is strictly constrained Chi
49、nese characters may not be spoken, and as mentioned before, the changes of qiatouquwei traditions, formed a kind of classical Chinese and oral opposition. In turn, classical Chinese, through political and educational channels, brings this change to the spoken language. Lv Shuxiang believes that Chinese characters are the material basis of classical chinese. 13 this nature is not to be neglected.However, this effect is also uneven. The phonetic changes mentioned above, refers to the Beijing dialect, and in some dialects in the south, the ancient pronunciatio
