Semiotic weakening of the strong character sign “sun” in the Chinese language

Abstract

The aim of the study is to identify the features of strong character signs from the perspective of the semiotic weakening law (using the Chinese character “sun” as an example). The Chinese character system is a heterogeneous system with different types of signs (strong, weakened and weak signs). To figure out the place and role of a strong sign in this system and to describe its basic features, the paper provides the description of different character categories in compliance with their stages of semiotic weakening. The analysis showed that pictograms and simple indicatives belong to the strong signs, idiographic, transfer and loan characters belong to the weakened signs, while phonosemantic compound characters belong to the weak signs. The work is novel in that it describes both the basic features of strong character signs and the process of semiotic weakening from the perspective of evolutionary and hierarchic relations. As a result, the study revealed that strong characters lose grammatical independence and retain their semantic meaning. It was also concluded that the more strong signs become a part of the writing system, the more they weaken and become conventional.