论“谐声”的鉴别及声符的历史音变

On Appraising of Pictophonetic Characters and the Historical Changing of Their Phonetic Elements

谐声字情况复杂:同形词的字符作声符时,其谐声字读音不同;同一声符在不同时地造的谐声字声音不同;造字时有些谐声字与声符只是音近,并不完全同音;许慎认定的“形声”,有的只是双声或叠韵,有的则只是会意。这四种情况表明,“谐声”的真实性及其表音程度,并不如今人所认为的那样理想、规整。“谐声”材料必须加以鉴别才能用于科学的古音研究。

The condition of pictophonetic characters is complicated. The 1st, when a phonetic recorded different words it had different sounds. The 2nd, a phonetic showed different sounds when it was in different times or different places to create pictophonetic characters. The 3rd, sometimes phonetic characters＇ sounds were only similar but not identical with their phonetic elements. The 4th, not all pictophonetic characters that Xu Shen （许慎） identified were true. Those demonstrate that the pictophonetic characters must be appraised before we use them to study ancient sounds.