Abstract:
The phonetic aspect of the Chinese written language is an area of Sinology that
has been investigated by a number of scholars, both Chinese and Western. Most
early researches have been concerned with (1) the historical development of phonetic
compound characters and (2) the organization of these characters into series
according to their common phon.etic elements. Chinese scholars such as Xu Shen
and later Chinese philologists, as well as Western scholars such as Chalmers (1911),
Soothill (1911), and Wieger (1927) have contributed substantially to our knowledge
.
of phonetic compounds and the role they play in the Chinese writing system.
Bernhard Karlgren (1923) has made use of phonetic series in his reconstructions of
Ancient and Archaic Chinese, and has made a number of statements regarding the
phonological changes which phonetic compounds have undergone in various stages
of the language.
