Radicals with Diplomatic Semantics in Ancient Chinese Dictionary “Shuo Wen Jie Zi”: Verification of Etymology

Abstract

There are several signs with «diplomatic» semantics among the 540 most ancient radicals of the Chinese writing, presented in the dictionary “Shuo wen jie zi” (1st century AD, Han era). Before the dictionary was created, Chinese writing had already existed for several thousand years; therefore some researchers (Zou Xiaoli, 2007; Oshanin, 1943) consider that the etymologies of the radicals in “Shuo wen” were formulated under the influence of the later eras and are often erroneous. The attempts are made to verify the etymologies of these signs with “diplomatic” semantics by comparing them with the more ancient forms jiaguwen and jinwen, discovered and scientifically described only in the 20th century. Such a comparison and interpretation will reveal the probable correct etymologies of the analyzed radicals of the Chinese dictionary “Shuo wen” and verify them. In addition, the study will shed light on the beginning of diplomacy in ancient China. The article also touches upon the problem of etymological analysis in a language with an ideographic type of writing, which is carried out not at the level of morphology, as in European languages, but at the level of hieroglyphic sign graphics.The problem of semantics and etymology of radicals was considered mainly by Chinese scientists (Zou Xiaoli, 2007; Wang Fengyang, 2011, etc.), while in the European linguistics, the problem was studied only fragmentarily (Kondrashevsky, 1982; Karasyova, 2019; Dictionary of etymologies, 2019). The radicals “with diplomatic” semantics, analyzed in the article, did not become the object of special study.The purpose of the article is to verify the etymology of a number of radicals in the ancient Chinese dictionary “Shuo wen jie zi” with “diplomatic” semantics, to consider the information about the dictionary “Shuo wen jie zi”, its basic radicals and their semantics, to briefly describe the features of etymological analysis in general and in Chinese language in particular, to compare the definitions of these radicals in various etymological dictionaries, thus verifying the etymologies presented in the dictionary “Shuo wen jie zi”.