Further discussion on the complexity 
of synonymic interchange of characters 
in the Chu bamboo slips

Abstract

The synonymic interchange of characters in the Chu bamboo slips could be combined with other language phenomena, such as jiajie (假借), showing complexity as follows: one character was synonymously interchanged as another character, and then it was borrowed as the loan graph of a third character, which was same in pronunciation as the other character, or one character was borrowed as the loan graph of another character, and then it was synonymously interchanged as a third character, which is the same as or close in meaning to the other character. After one character was synonymously interchanged as another character, the interchanged character could be used as the phonetic component to construct new characters.