The so called “special characters”, is the characters that intended to represent a particular meaning. The concept of “special characters” has been developed for a long time, and as early as the Southern Tang Dynasty, Xu Kai’s (徐锴) interpretation of “lang (郎)” in the “Shuowen Jiezi Xizhuan 《( 說 文解字繫傳》)” already had the meaning of “special characters”. The Qing dynasty scholar Wang Yun (王筠) also discussed “special characters” many times. “Special characters” are exist more or less in various periods of Chinese characters, and “special characters” have appeared as early as the existence of oracle-bone inscriptions. This paper preliminarily sorts out the “special characters” in the oracle-bone inscriptions, and then groups these “special characters” and briefly sorts out the configuration of each group of characters, in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the development of “special characters” in the oracle-bone inscriptions. On the basis of analyzing their use in combination with the example and context, the “special characters” in the oracle-bone inscriptions are compared with the “special characters” in Dongba script, and it is found that these “special characters” have distinctive characteristics when used. The “special characters” in the oracle-bone inscriptions are often accompanied by partial changes in the shape structure, and the frequency of their use is unbalanced. When “special characters” are used, there is often a situation where a character represents a phrase, the use of “special characters” is often limited by superordinate level semantics and it will gradually be unified into a glyph in the later stage. Finally, combined with the production and development process of Chinese characters, we find that the production of “special characters” is a natural manifestation in the process of writing development, which is closely related to the context of the use of oracle-bone inscriptions and the thinking habits of primitive ancestors.

• 高俊霞(西南大學) | Junxia GAO
• 鄧飛 (西南大學) | Fei DENG