Hieroglyphic valence and frequency as typological characteristics of Chinese hieroglyphic writing

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of such typological characteristics of Chinese writing as character valence and frequency. The aim of the study is to establish the average hieroglyphic valence of one hundred most and one hundred least frequent characters and to reveal the dependence of hieroglyphic valence on character frequency. To quantitatively characterize Chinese characters, the method of quantitative counting (solid counting method, counting method) of characters from the data of paper and electronic dictionaries was used. Using the method of automated information extraction from Chinese language corpuses, we quantitatively analyzed the character base of Chinese Internet corpus, INTERNET-ZH, and LCMC, determined the frequency of characters, and identified the hundred most and least frequent characters. The average hieroglyphic valence of one hundred most and one hundred least frequent hieroglyphs was counted by using the resources of Xinhua Online Character Dictionary and Qihai Web Portal by using the continuous counting method. In the quantitative analysis, quantitative data on initial, middle and final hieroglyphic valence were obtained, and hieroglyphs with zero hieroglyphic valence were identified. As a result, the analysis showed that the most frequent hieroglyphs have higher hieroglyphic valence than the least frequent ones (the average hieroglyphic valence of one hundred least frequent hieroglyphs is 2.23, and that of one hundred most frequent hieroglyphs is 503,32). Theoretical and practical significance is substantiated by the fact that new material on the topic under study is generalized, the concept of «hieroglyphic valence» is introduced into scientific turnover, the difference between morphemic and hieroglyphic valence in Chinese is described.