Drawing primarily on unearthed texts, this paper systematically investigates, from the perspective of the history of Chinese writing, the diachronic evolution of character usage for {誅1} and {殺} and the factors underlying their development. In the Shang period, {誅1} was mainly represented by the early forms of the character “殊”. During the Warring States period, the Chu writing system developed special graphs specifically for this word, while from the Qin and Han periods onward, “誅” gradually became its conventional written form. The character usage of {殺}, by contrast, underwent a different course of development: variant forms coexisted in the Shang period, graphic forms were further adjusted in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, regional differentiation emerged between the Qin and Chu writing systems during the Warring States period, and in the Qin and Han periods “殺” became the predominant form while variant, abbreviated, and vulgar forms continued to coexist. Although the two words followed different evolutionary paths, their development was shaped by several common factors, including the coordination between semantic motivation in character formation and writing economy, the interaction between regional differentiation in character usage and political standardization, and functional competition and adjustment within the Chinese writing system. A further examination of synonymous words denoting killing shows that their written forms did not converge on a single semantic classifier. Instead, different words highlighted different semantic aspects of the event of killing, such as the resulting state of death, the use of weapons or force, and the object affected, thereby giving rise to a relatively stable division of functions among semantic classifiers. This indicates that convergence toward a shared semantic classifier is not an inevitable outcome in the evolution of character usage among synonyms. Cognitive prominence assigned to different aspects of the same semantic event may likewise contribute to the functional differentiation of semantic classifiers.

目 錄
1.引言
2.{誅1}的歷時用字情況考察
    2.1 殷商時期{誅1}的用字
    2.2 戰國時期{誅1}的用字
    2.3 秦漢時期{誅1}的用字
3.{殺}的歷時用字情況考察
    3.1 殷商時期{殺}的用字
    3.2 兩周時期{殺}的用字
    3.3 秦漢時期{殺}的用字
4.{誅1}與{殺}用字演變的原因分析
    4.1 {誅1}用字演變的動因
    4.2 {殺}用字演變的動因
5.餘論

• 宋欣潔(鄭州大學文學院、“古文字與中華文明傳承發展工程”協同攻關創新平臺碩士研究生) | Xinjie SONG
• 何余華(鄭州大學漢字文明研究院、“古文字與中華文明傳承發展工程”協同攻關創新平臺教授、博士生導師) | Yuhua HE