earticle

영어

The purpose of this paper is to show the iconic relationships between form and meaning in Chinese and to examine the six categories of Chinese characters. According to the Xu Tongqiang's “sinogram-based theory”, the basic structure of Chinese units ‘Zi(字)’ and coding mechanism is discussed. There is a natural and motivated relationship between form and meaning. Language has a characteristics of iconicity as well as arbitrariness. Language is a realistic coding system, in Chinese coding code is ‘Zi(字)’. The six categories of Chinese characters combining modern methods of cognitive linguistics is analyzed. ‘Zi(字)’ is a motivation reflected in real phenomenon, to explore the ‘Zi(字)’ motivations between form and meaning. Pictographic(Xiangxing), Self-explanatory(Zhishi), Associative compound(Huiyi), Mutually explanatory characters(Zhuanzhu), the relationship between form and meaning is motivations. Shape and sound(Xingsheng) with the salient property of likeness of the objects belonging to the iconicity. Phonetic loan character(Jiajie), the relationship between form and meaning is arbitrary.