As Alex Schuessler (2009, 34–39) has articulated, it is difficult to know the real reason for the choice of a particular graphic element within a composite graph. This is often due to “mental or cultural associations” that tend to interfere with the choice. Even with a simple graph it is not easy to discern what we call “graphic design” that must have guided the original scribes to create the graphs to express words. These are important issues in Chinese paleography. We will use terms like “pure phonetic”, “quasi-phonetic”, “quasi-phonosignific”, “etymonic”, “quasi-etymonic” that are not commonly used in the literature (we will define them in the paper). The Old Chinese (OC) rimes comprised of a relatively few words such as *-əp, *-en, and *-ui suffer a shortage of graphs to write the words with such rimes. This implies the existence of graphs with only a segment or segments of an OC syllable that suggest its entire phonological form with a meaning or function. For example, the top portion of (=羊 *jaŋ~*laŋ, i.e., ) seems to serve as quasi-phonosignific in (=羌 *khaŋ~*khiaŋ—cf. 西戎, 牧羊人也, 羊亦聲—SW). That is, 羌 were “sheep herders”, and the grapheme can be taken as partial phonetic, not really “亦聲” it would seem, because only the rime of 羊 agrees (“quasi-phonetic”). When we pay attention not only to the rimes but also to the initials, we may, if cogent analysis can be made, come to understand why a word was written in a certain specific way. This interfaces between paleography and historical phonology, further involving historical lexicology. We shall also assess some traditional paleographical interpretations of nǚ 女= ‘woman’ and mín 民= ‘people’ and try to descry “graphic designs” by the original scribes. Here, however, we first need to figure out the underlying meanings of the words nǚ and mín in their early history. Their semantic fields could range from synonymy, near/quasi-synonymy, antonyms, and near/quasi-antonyms to members of some large word-family. In this paper, we limit our analysis to some “graphic minimal pairs” and the words represented by them. For example, “ (女 ‘woman’) and (卩 ‘joint’)”; “ (如 ‘follow, go’) and (訊 ‘interrogate’)”; “ (目 ‘eye’) and (臣 ‘servant’)”; “ (民 ‘people’) and (見 ‘see’)”; and a few related graphs.

許思萊 (2009, 34–39) 曾指出，分析合體字中特定部件的真正使用原因是很困難的，這往往由精神文化聯想所決定。即使是簡單的形體也難以分析我們的所謂的“字形設計”，字形設計必須指導原始字形，以便創造一個字形來表示一個字。這些都是中國古文字學中的重要問題。本文將使用文獻中不常用的術語，如“純語音”“准語音”“准語音意義”“音韻”“准音韻”等（我們將在本文中對其進行定義）。古漢語 (OC) 結構由相對較少見的韻（如*-əp，和*-en）組成，*-ui缺少必要的字形，因為不能構成適合OC結構的字，它暗示其整個聲符的含義或功能。例如：“ ”上部的部件“ ”似乎在“ ”字（《說文》：“西戎，牧羊人也，羊亦聲。”）中作為准語音意義出現。也就是說，“羌”是牧羊人，部件“ ”可以看做表示字音的部分，而似乎並非“亦聲”，因為只有“羊”的讀音符合（准語音意義）。當我們不僅關注字音，同時也關注部分字形的時候，如果我們可以進行有力的分析，就能理解為什麼一個字會用這種特殊的方式書寫。這是古文字學、音韻學和訓詁學之間的關聯。 此外，我們還將分析“ （女）”和“ （民）”的古文字學解釋，並嘗試以其本字解釋其造字依據。但在此我們應該先弄清“女”和“民”在上古社會的潛在含義。它們的語義範圍涉及同義詞、近義詞、反義詞、近反義詞，乃至更寬範圍語義場中的詞。本文對此限制為最小範圍關聯的一組字及其代表的詞。如：“ (女) 和 (卩)”、“ (如)和 (訊)”、“ (目) 和 (臣)”、“ (民) 和 (見)”及其他相關字形。

Abstract
§1. Introduction
§2. Graphic Design (abbreviated as “GD”)
§3 Paleography, Historical Phonology, and Historical Lexicology: TheCase of shí/*gip 􀥱 ‘ten’
§4 “Kneeling Women with Their Wrists Crossed”: Lexicological,
§5 “Slaves with Their Eyes Gouged”: Lexicological, PaleographicAnalyses, and GMP in Quest of GDs
§6 Conclusions
References

• Ken-ichi Takashima(University of British Columbia) | 고도겸일