从四种汉字频度的比较看汉字的性质

Comparing Four Statistical Surveys of Chinese Characters' Frequency to Confirm the Nature of Chinese Writing System

汉字是语素文字。语素文字的性质决定了汉字体系的基本特征:字种数量庞大且不确定。由于字种和语素相关,语素和意义相关,任何字频统计结果都只能反映汉语用字的一般状态或基本状态,并带有一定的倾向性,哪些字常用,哪些字不常用,与字频统计所选择的语料内容密切相关,相同内容的语料又与时代背景密切相关;虽然汉字总体数量庞大,但常用字种只有几千。常用字种所记录的语素,都具有很强的构词能力,是构成汉语基本词汇的基础,也是创造新词的中坚,能够满足现代汉语的基本需求(累积频率达到99%)。

Modern Chinese writing system is morphemic. The morphemic nature decides the general characteristics of Chinese writing system： There are large number of characters in the system, but only a few thousands of them are of high frequency. The content and the amount of corpus influence a character＇s frequency and the type number of the survey, for a character represents a morpheme, and a morpheme carries a meaning.