Ontology Description of Chinese Character Semantics

Abstract

Chinese characters are the basic elements of Chinese culture. It is also the important basis of the Chinese foreign communication and exchange. Only simply considers the glyph and pronunciation of modern Chinese character as the communication object cannot fully display the extensive and profound Chinese culture. It needs to consider the evolution of the characters, such as Oracle Bone Inscriptions (OBI), bronze inscriptions, seal script, official script, regular script, cursive script and running script. It is important to describe the inherent relationship among the modern Chinese characters and various stages of characters, and to ensure their semantic consistency. Although there are differences between Chinese characters and other characters in the form of expression and record, the expression is consistent with the objective existence of the real world, which is the same as the concept of semantic expression. Ontology as a formal explicit specification of a shared conceptualization can provide a unified conceptual model for the semantics of Chinese characters. The Chinese character knowledge ontology can greatly promote the Chinese foreign communication and propagate.