The birth of the Chinese character ‘ 奈 ’: Reflections on semantic differentiation

Abstract

In this study, ‘奈’, is the earliest character in Ancient Chinese to derive its meaning from a single character. It was derived and developed from the sounds and characters corresponding to ‘奈’, ‘柰’ and ‘祟’. Thus, the formation and elimination of sounds in Ancient Chinese can be viewed through the one-sided development of Chinese characters from the time of the oracle bone script period to the present, but it can be seen that sound components are not all components of lexical variation, and thatW the process of character differentiation is ultimately influenced by the similarity of characters, their meaning and their development. The article describes a study to examine the development of lexical meaning and the relationship between its semantic elements: first, the original meaning of the characters and the extended meaning; second, the development of sound and dialect from the Ancient Chinese period to the Middle Chinese period; and third, the grammatical implementation and function that can be checked through it, and the semantic analysis elements found in the Chinese characters, excavated texts and traditional texts.