한어(漢語)를 기록하는 언어부호로서 한자는 점진적으로 발전을 거듭하여 성숙한 문자체계를 갖추었다. 서사(書寫)의 측면에서 한자는 고문자 단계에서 서사원소(書寫 元素)의 계통(系統)적인 발전 과정을 거쳐, 예서에서 한자의 기본 ‘필획‘이 완성되었 다. 고문자 서사원소의 체계적인 발전은 크게 두 가지 방향으로 이루어졌다. 하나는 고문자 서사원소의 본질적인 변화이다. 이는 서사원소가 사물을 묘사하는 선에서 글 자를 구성하는 선으로 변화하는 과정이다. 다른 하나는 고문자의 서사원소가 유형화 되는 과정이다. 서사원소의 유형화를 통하여 소전에서는 자형에 사용된 모든 ‘선‘이 9가지 기본 대유형으로 귀납되었다. 이러한 고문자 서사원소의 계통적 발전 과정은 한자발전사에서 매우 중요한 과정으로, 이를 통하여 한자는 예변(隸變)의 단계를 진 행할 수 있는 기반을 마련하였다.

The definition of ‘wen’ in the preface of Shuowen Jiezi by Xushen is “creating characters is according to shape image, so the shape image is wen”. Wenshi of Zhang Taiyan studies 510 single-element characters as ‘chuwen’ in Shuowen Jiezi. He is the first scholar who proposes the concept of ‘chuwen’. Subsequently, experts in ancient writing apply the theory of ‘chuwen’ to explain the shape of ancient writing massively, representing great achievements. Based on this, the paper divides ‘chuwen’ into ‘phonetic one’ and ‘semantic one’ to study the reading method and applicative value, respectively. This paper lists 10 examples of 潮, 瓜, 訊, 要, , 範, 瓒, 金, 臨, 沐 to illustrate that ‘chuwen’ must be paid attention to in the interpretation of difficult ancient writing.

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.