The ancients were able to express some intuitive and easily recognizable things in stick figure-like hieroglyphs, but some abstract things were not so easy to draw. So the clever ancients made changes to some pictographs, adding symbols that indicate the role of the original character on the basis of making it a new Chinese character, as shown in the figure below, the word "blade" is to add a stroke to the word "knife", and use this arrow-like indicator symbol to point out that the sharpest part of the knife is the blade. Therefore, when we want to distinguish between a signifier and a pictograph, we only need to see whether the word has a symbol that indicates the indicative function, and it can be said that the signifier is a pictogram with an indicator symbol.
There are a variety of indicator symbols in the word "point", and some use a "point" or "mention" as the indicator symbol, as shown in Figure 51-1 "Blade" word;Some use a "horizontal" or "vertical" as an indication symbol, as shown in the figure below, "up" and "down". The word "up" and the word "down" in the oracle bone inscription represent the horizon, the short horizontal is the indicator symbol, and the short horizontal above the long horizontal is the word "Shang", which means that the position of the thing is above the standard, and vice versa.
What's even more interesting is that the ancients actually used the " " as an indicator symbol that we often use now. The figure below shows the evolution of the word "fierce". The word "fierce" on the outside of the word "凵" means a trap, "indicates that directly above the trap is the location of the evil", it is a warning symbol that means "please approach by mistake", similar to the prohibition signs used in our modern traffic signals. It can be seen that for the symbol of "", from ancient times to the present, from abroad to China, people's understanding of it is basically the same.
In order to represent different parts of the same type of things, the ancients often created a series of signifiers with similar shapes but different meanings, for example, the ancients borrowed a "wood" character to create many different signifiers. As shown in the figure below, the word "Ben", its indicator symbol is the short horizontal below the word "wood", and its location is the root system of the tree, so the word "Ben" originally refers to the root of the tree. Because the roots of the tree are the foundation of the tree, the word "ben" is extended to refer to the root and foundation of things.
Corresponding to the word "this" is the word "end" (as shown in the figure below), "end" is to add a horizontal above the word "wood" as an indicator symbol, this horizontal means that "end" is the location of the treetops of the trees, so the original meaning of "end" refers to the treetops. Because the treetop is the last structure that grows out of the tree, the word "end" is extended to mean the end, the last, such as "the end" and "the end". The treetops are not as important as the roots and trunks of trees, so the word "end" has also become the antonym of the word "this", which is extended to be secondary and inferior, such as "leaving the original and chasing the end", which is a metaphor for not paying attention to the fundamentals and only grasping the details.
The word "end" and the word "wei" are a pair of similar characters, and their difference is only in the length of the two horizontal drawings. The evolution of the word "not" is shown in the figure below, in fact, the word "not" does not refer to the word thing, but a pictograph, which can be seen from the oracle bone writing, it is more than the word "wood" has a curved pen, this curved pen is not an indicator symbol, but the ancients specially drew the crown, indicating the appearance of the trees with lush leaves, so the original meaning of "not" means that the trees are luxuriant. Now its original meaning has disappeared and has been given many new meanings, such as the "not" in "yet" and "never" means "no". "Wei" is also one of the twelve earthly branches, and the ancients used the earthly branch with the heavenly stem to use the time, such as "Weishi" refers to one to three o'clock in the afternoon.
The word "Zhu" is another word related to trees, the evolution process is shown in the figure below, its original meaning refers to the trunk, the oracle bone inscription is to add a horizontal in the middle of the word "wood", this horizontal drawing is its indicator symbol, indicating that this is the location of the trunk. Originally, "Zhu" was an ancient word for "Zhu", because "Zhu" was borrowed to mean red, so the ancients added a "wood" next to it on the left side, and created a "Zhu" character to replace the original "Zhu" character that represented the trunk.
From the roots to the trunks to the treetops, it can be said that the ancients have reached the extreme in the use of indicator symbols, which not only simplifies the construction of Chinese characters, but also facilitates the understanding and use of Chinese characters by future generations.
Due to the evolution of Chinese characters and many other reasons, it is difficult to see that many characters were created by the method of signifying, but they still retain the unique structure of signifiers, which are signifiers. The words "inch" and "ruler" are shown in the figure below. The small seal of the word "inch" is written with a short horizontal point to a hand, this horizontal drawing is the indicator symbol, it refers to the position of the pulse at the wrist of the person, called "inch pulse" in ancient times, which is the original meaning of the word "inch". "Cun" was still a unit of length in ancient times, and the ancients set the distance between the inch vein and the horizontal stripe of the wrist as one inch. Because "inch" is a relatively small unit of length in ancient times, it is also extended to refer to short, such as "inch soil" and "inch grass" are words that are borrowed from the meaning of short. The word "ruler" of the small seal is composed of two parts, the upper left part represents a lying person, and the lower right part uses a curved pen to indicate the location of the "ruler vein" in the human body, so the original meaning of "ruler" also refers to a part of the human body, but the age is too old, where is the specific position, the saying is different, but one thing is recognized, that is, the ancients set the length between the wrist horizontal stripe to the elbow as one foot, and one foot is equal to ten inches. The idiom "inch by inch" was produced by the ancients in length conversion.
The ancients perfectly combined abstract signifiers with pictorial hieroglyphs to create a multitude of interesting signifiers. It has brought the creation of Chinese characters into a new field and opened a new era of symbolic representation.