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영어

In his postscript敘 Shuowenjiezi說文解字, Xushen許愼 suggested character writing, Wen文, as the fundamental source in linguistic activities and emphasized the perpetuity of Wen文, being irrelevant to time and place. His idea had been basically succeeded from Han dynasty. He insisted that Wen文 would not change its essence, even though cangxie倉頡's shuxie書契, letter inscriptions, had been developed into various styles of writings which were called shuti書體, and they would change through time. Thanks to Xushen, the Chinese civilization was able to have its unique character writing system and studies of characters. However, intentions and thoughts cannot be accurately expressed merely by images, figures, and shapes. Vocal sound and speaking are also essential in the process of communication. Would a delicate and exquisite character writing system be sufficient enough to solve this problem? Xushen might have been perplexed confronting this question. We can find traces of his intellectual suffering in his book Shuowenjiezi說文解字, which focuses on explaining each and every character in detail. A typical example would be the character ‘ci䛐’ and the words that include it. By focusing on the usage of ci䛐, this article aims to explain the process in establishing Xushen’s theory.