Semantic classifiers in Guodian bamboo manuscripts: Reconstructing categories in the ancient Chinese mind

Abstract

Ancient Chinese scripts are one of the most complex writing systems in the world. Many graphs contain components referred to as unpronounced semantic classifiers. These components bear a semantic relationship to the meaning of the word written by the graph. It is proposed that the set of semantic components, as well as the specific semantic concepts that they encode, reflect a cognitive map of knowledge organization of the community of script users at a particular place and time. By analyzing the semantic classifiers within a constrained manuscript corpus, it is possible to build a network that models aspects of the ancient Chinese knowledge organization as reflected in this corpus. With the help of the digital tool iClassifier, a corpus-based study is conducted based on the sample texts, Guodian bamboo manuscripts. Additionally, a list of semantic classifiers is presented, two prominent categories 心 [heart/senses & emotion] and 辵 [road + foot/movement] are analyzed, and a visualization network of the sample corpus is drawn.