Ancient and modern characters refer to the sameLexical itemThe phenomenon of "diachronic same words but different characters" has been used in different times.
Record originalPolysemyorHomographThe word isancient writingThe words that record the new words formed after differentiation areToday's word。The newly created words and the original words that also express the original meaning are collectively called "ancient and modern words".The newly created word is "today's word", and the original word with meaning is "ancient word".For example, the original meaning of "Mo (twilight)" is that the sun sets in the grass, indicating sunset and evening. Later, the word "Mo" was borrowed as a negativeindefinite pronouns andnegative adverbs , in order towritten languageIn order not to be confused, we added the shape symbol "Ri" to the character "Mo" to express the meaning of "evening". "Mo" and "Mu" became a pair of ancient and modern characters.
classification
Announce
edit
The word "ancient and modern" means ancient and modernDifferentiation characterWe call the words before differentiation "ancient", and the words after differentiation that have their own expertise "modern".In other words, ancient and modern characters can be divided into two categories:
1. Font structure
For example, if the sinner's "sin" is written in ancient Chinese, the word "self" is written above, and a laborious "Xin" is added below. The latter word is no longer used.
2. From ancient times to the present
Modern characters are generated on the basis of ancient characters, and ancient and modern characters are connected in form.
For example, the word "debt" is originally written as "responsibility", and "debt" is generated on the basis of "responsibility"."Responsibility" and "debt" form the ancient and modern words.Another example is "anti" and "return". "anti" is an ancient word, and "return" is a modern word.
Interchangeable characters
Announce
edit
Different concepts
Ancient and modern characters andInterchangeable charactersThey are two different concepts, but they are both different and related.
1、 We should observe the development and change of the same character from the historical perspective when we divide them. Ancient characters and modern characters appear successively, which is the relationship between the early and later characters, and belongs to the vertical aspect, such as "Ran Huo" and "County Xuan".The interchangeable characters and the interchangeable characters appeared in the same period, and the interchangeable characters are the horizontal aspect of studying the general situation of Chinese characters in the same period. For example, "I wish Bo had the words and officials would not dare to be more virtuous" (Records of the Historian)·Xiang Yu's origin》）"Double" means "back", and "How long have witches been there? Disciples are interested in" (Records of the Historian - Biographies of Funny), "interest" means "promotion"."Double" and "back", "interest" and "promotion" are words that exist at the same time.
2、 Ancient and modern words are generally related in meaning.Such as "the length of cloth and silk is the same, but the family is similar"（《Mencius Teng Wengong》）Of which "Jia" is pre differentiationancient writingLater, the words denoting the meaning of merchants used the original form, and the words denoting the meaning of price were coined with the word "price". "Jia" and "price" became a pair of ancient and modern words, and the two meanings of "Jia" and "price" in the meaning of merchants were closely linked.Another example is that the "anti" in the "cold and summer change festival, the beginning of a reversal" is "return", which is also clearly related to the meaning of the ancient and modern wordsInterchangeable charactersIn general, there is no connection.For example, "flea" has nothing to do with "morning", "double" with "back", "interest" with "promotion".
3、 The ancient and modern characters are connected in the form structure.One is based on ancient charactersphonetic element of a Chinese pictophonetic characterForm the present word.For example, the meaning of the word "bird" refers tobird, and use it to express the meaning of "capture".Later, "bird" was added as the phonetic symbolSemaphore"Hand" constitutes the word "arrest" today.Another example is that "qi" and the symbol "bamboo" form the current word "ji".Most ancient and modern characters are expressed in this wayStructural relationship。Such as "faint marriage", "want waist" and so on.The other is to change the meaning of ancient characters to create new characters.For example, the word "say" means both lobbying and joy.Later, the meaning symbol "Yan" of "Shuo" was replaced by the meaning symbol "Yuan", forming the word "Yue" today;Another example is "obituary - going", where the meaning symbol "go" is replaced by the meaning symbol "word" to form the word "obituary" today.Another example is "wrong measures", "competition environment", etc.However, the number of ancient and modern words in this structural relationship is far less than the previous one,Interchangeable charactersNot all of them are related to the structure of the font.Such as“Yang goodsTo seeConfuciusWhen Confucius disappears, Confucius' dolphin will be returned "（《The Analects of Confucius · Yang Goods》）, "Return", "Feed".Another example is "peel jujube in August and get rice in October" (The Book of Songs · Headwind · July). There are many such examples.
Similarities and differences in meaning
The concept of ancient and modern characters has been explained above. To understand it, we should also pay attention to that because of the creation of modern charactersBorrowed wordsIt becomes an ancient character.For example, "say - yue", when making joy, the word "yue" borrowed "say", and the word "like to say" and "don't say" in writing. Later, because of the special word (today's word "yue"), then because of the different time of word creation, there is a relationship between ancient and modern times.
phonetic loan characters
phonetic loan charactersIt refers to the kind of characters that didn't create today later.This is an obvious difference between it and ancient and modern characters.Most of the borrowed words are abstract and difficult to makeFunction words in classical Chinese, such as "I", "but", "yan", "qi", "zi", etc."I" was originally a weapon, which was borrowed asfirst person；"And" was originally a beard, pretending to be a turning conjunction;"Yan" originally refers to a kind of yellow bird produced in the Jianghuai River. It is assumed to be the writing form of the demonstrative pronoun and the qi word "Yan".The characteristic of borrowed words is that once borrowed, they will not be returned for a long time.Over time, borrowed words often create new words, so there is no ancient or modern words to speak of.
Ancient and Modern Words
The formation of some ancient and modern characters initially went through the stage of borrowing,Loan without wordsIt is made of Chinese charactersPhonetic symbols, to record a new word (new meaning), regardless of whether the new word, new meaning and word meaning are related.Whether it is related to or irrelevant to the original meaning can lead to the generation of ancient and modern words.For example, "Feng - salary", the word "Feng" is held by both hands, accepted respectfully, and borrowed as the meaning of salary. The two meanings are closely related.Another example is "Mo - dusk". The original meaning of "Mo" is "sunset" and it was borrowed to recordUndigested pronounThe meaning of is irrelevant.These two examples tell us that if a word has an ancient and modern relationship with another word, then before today's word came into being, there was a borrowing stage in which ancient words were borrowed to express meanings related to or unrelated to it. Although from the perspective of the Six Books, "Feng" and "Mo" were borrowed words, it was precisely because it later created new words "Feng" and "Mu", so it is customary to call these words "Feng""Twilight" is an ancient word, not a borrowed word.
