The same character or word has two opposite meanings, and this phenomenon is called the enantiosemy in traditional Chinese. It was as early as 1728 that Joseph de Prémare concerned about this special phenomenon in the Chinese language. In the book Notitia Linguae Sinicae, he cited four examples of Chinese enantiosemy characters such as “Luan”(亂), “Du”(毒), “Gu”(蠱) and “Qing”(清). Later in 1891, G. Schlegel published an article entitled “On the Causes of Antiphrasis in Language” in T’oung Pao, in which nearly twenty Chinese enantiosemy characters were listed and analysed. Upon closer examination, some of the Chinese enantiosemy characters cited by Joseph de Prémare and G. Schlegel do not stand up to scrutiny, because they are not objective and clear enough in terms of a basic but crucial issue - the connotation of the “enantios” in the enantiosemy. This paper analyses all the Chinese enantiosemy characters listed by Joseph de Prémare and G. Schlegel, and summarises Western scholars’ perceptions of the “enantios” in the enantiosemy. On the basis of the compilation of Chinese scholars’ viewpoints, the connotation of the “enantios” in the enantiosemy is clearly defined as “opposite” and “relative” two areas; and mainly borrowed from the research results of the antonym, the “enantios” is divided into four types of relationship such as the complementarity, the antonym, the converseness and the pragmatic.

The word-symbolization of Chinese characters’ forms is the transformation from the representation of objects to the sound and meaning of words. The process of word-symbolization is the only way to develop Chinese characters. In the theoretical framework of word-symbolization, this paper probes into the influence of the word-symbolization process on the formations of Chinese characters. By paying attention to the specific performances of Chinese characters’ forms by the word-symbolization, this paper analyzes and summarizes how the conversion modes, the transforming methods, and the evolutionary causes and laws concerned with the changes in the formation of Chinese characters during the word-symbolization process take place. The specific performances include the “form” level and the “form+consciousness” level, and the former is embodied as the lines and the word-symbolization while the latter is embodied in the formed radicals and the square-shaped structure. The conversion modes can be classified into two categories: the original conversion code and the modification conversion code. The transforming methods mainly include the direct transformation method, the modified transformation method, the adding components method and the replacing components method. Initially, the forms of Chinese characters represent only objects rather than words, and this “congenital defect” of deviating from the original due state should be the internal motivation to drive the word-symbolization’s occurrence. In addition, there are external factors such as politics, writing and people’s aesthetic psychology that promote the word-symbolization process. In essence, the word-symbolization of Chinese characters’ forms is the result of the combined effect of cognitive law and practical law. The process of word-symbolization makes the whole Chinese characters’ forms and structures achieve the self-improvement so as to return to the state of representing the sound and meaning of the word. And it is the word-symbolization that makes Chinese characters possible to be passed down from generation to generation, and to be in use until now.