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.

자연교잡 실생 작약집단내에서 지상부 및 지하부에 관련하는 각형질의 특성과 분포를 조사한 결과는 다음과 같다. 자연교잡 실생 작약집단의 지상부생육은 맹아기가 4월 1일~4월 15일, 경장은 80.0~21.0cm, 주당 경수는 15~3개로 분포가 다양하였다. 지하부의 근장은 59~12cm, 주당 근수는 73~4개였으며, 주당 약근 수량은 882~37g으로 개체간 변이가 심하였고 750g이상 되는 대형도 7.1% 분포하였다. Paeoniflorin함량은 10.29~1.9%로 7.5%이상의고 Paeoniflorin을 가진 개체도 14.3%분포하였다. 근장은 경직경과, 뿌리수량은 경장 및 뿌리직경과 각각 고도의 유의한 정의상관이 있었다.