论汉字本义

Original Meaning of Chinese Characters

字本义”就是通过文字的构形意图记载的初始意义,也称“字形义”。华夏先民用构形意图来表现认识的思维成果——概念大致有两种方法:直观图标与意会图标。文字在原创时与实物都是对等的,创造者想要表示的意义,全然通过实物的图像来实现。但是随着岁月的推移,初创时的意义在图像中渐渐模糊、神秘乃至完全忘却,因此,我们要想复原图像意义与实物之间的对等关系,多数情况下是靠“猜想”来实现的。考正汉字的本义,需要科学的猜想。

“The original meaning of Chinese characters”is the meaning which was recorded based on the conformation of characters,also known as“graphic meaning”.Chinese ancestors intented to express the concept,the thinking of recognition,by the configuration of a character,generally through two methods:intuitive icon and tacit icon.A configuration of the Chinese character is equal to its object in originally,and the creator expressed the meaning completely through the physical outline.But as time went by,the original meanings were gradually blurred,mystified and even completely forgotten.Therefore,if we want to recover the equivalence between the meaning of a image and its object,in most cases,it depends on our“guess”.Therefore,textual research of original meaning of Chinese characters needs reasonable conjecture.