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Aradical (Chinese:部首;pinyin:bùshǒu;lit. 'section header'), orindexing component, is a visually prominentcomponent of aChinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in aChinese dictionary. The radical for a character is typically asemantic component, but it can also be another structural component or an artificially extracted portion of the character. In some cases, the original semantic orphonological connection has become obscure, owing to changes in the meaning or pronunciation of the character over time.
The use of the English termradical is based on an analogy between the structure of Chinese characters and theinflection of words in European languages.[a] Radicals are also sometimes calledclassifiers, but this name is more commonly applied to the grammaticalmeasure words in Chinese.[2]
In the earliest Chinese dictionaries, such as theErya (3rd century BC), characters were grouped together in broad semantic categories.Because the vast majority of characters arephono-semantic compounds, combining a semantic component with a phonetic component, each semantic component tended to recur within a particular section of the dictionary. In the 2nd century AD, theHan dynasty scholarXu Shen organized his etymological dictionaryShuowen Jiezi by selecting 540 recurring graphic elements he calledbù (部; "categories").[3] Most were common semantic components, but they also included shared graphic elements such as a dot or horizontal stroke. Some were even artificially extracted groups of strokes, termed "glyphs" by Serruys,[4] which never had an independent existence other than being listed inShuowen. Each character was listed under only one element, which is then referred to as the radical for that character. For example, characters containing女;nǚ; "female" or木;mù; "tree, wood" are often grouped together in the sections for those radicals.
Mei Yingzuo's 1615 dictionaryZihui made two further innovations. He reduced the list of radicals to 214 and arranged characters under each radical in increasing order of the number of additionalstrokes—the radical-and-stroke method still used in the vast majority of present-day Chinese dictionaries. These innovations were also adopted by the more famousKangxi Dictionary of 1716. Thus the standard 214 radicals introduced in theZihui are usually known as theKangxi radicals. These were first calledbùshǒu (部首; "section header") in theKangxi Dictionary.[3] Although there is some variation in such lists – depending primarily on what secondary radicals are also indexed – these canonical 214 radicals of theKangxi Dictionary still serve as the basis for most modernChinese dictionaries. Some of the graphically similar radicals are combined in many dictionaries, such as月;yuè; "moon" and the月 form (⺼) of肉;ròu; "meat, flesh".
After the writing system reform inmainland China, the traditional set ofKangxi radicals became unsuitable for indexing Simplified Chinese characters. In 1983, the Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written Language and the State Administration of Publication of China publishedThe Table of Unified Indexing Chinese Character Components (Draft) (汉字统一部首表（草案).[5] In 2009, theMinistry of Education of the People's Republic of China and theState Language Work Committee issuedTheTable of Indexing Chinese Character Components (GF 0011-2009汉字部首表), which includes 201 principal indexing components and 100 associated indexing components[6] (In China's normative documents, "radical" is defined as any component or偏旁;piānpáng of Chinese characters, while部首 is translated as "indexing component".[7]).
Radicals may appear in any position in a character. For example,女 appears on the left side in the characters姐, 媽, 她, 好 and姓, but it appears at the bottom in妾. Semantic components tend to appear on the top or on the left side of the character, and phonetic components on the right side or at the bottom.[8] These are loose rules, however, and exceptions are plenty. Sometimes, the radical may span more than one side, as in園 =囗; "enclosure" +袁, or街 =行; "go, movement" +圭. More complicated combinations exist, such as勝 =力; "strength" +朕—the radical is in the lower-right quadrant.
In many characters, the components (including radicals) are distorted or modified to fit into a block with other elements. They may be narrowed, shortened, or have different shapes entirely. Changes in shape, rather than simple distortion, may result in fewerstrokes. In some cases, combinations may have alternates. The shape of the component can depend on its placement with other elements in the character.
The shape阝 is indexed as two different radicals depending on where it appears in the character. Placed on the right, as in都;dū; "metropolis" (also read asdōu; "all"), it represents an abbreviated form of邑;yì; "city"; placed on the left, as in陸;lù; "land", it represents an abbreviated radical form of阜;fù; "mound, hill".
Some of the most important variant combining forms (besides邑 →阝 and阜 →阝per the above) are:
Over 80% of Chinese characters arephono-semantic compounds (形聲字):[9] a semantic component gives a broad category of meaning, while a phonetic component suggests the sound. Usually, the radical is the semantic component.[10]
Thus, although some authors use the termradical for semantic components (義符;yìfú),[b][11] others distinguish the latter asdeterminatives[12] orsignifics[13] or by some other term.[c][d][e]
Many radicals are artificial extractions of portions of characters, some of which are further changed when applied (such as亅;jué, juě in了;liǎo), as explained bySerruys (1984), who therefore prefers the term "glyph" extraction rather than graphic extraction.[17] This is even truer of modern dictionaries, which cut radicals to less than half the number inShuowen, at which point it becomes impossible to have enough to cover a semantic element of every character. A sample of theFar Eastern Chinese English Dictionary of mere artificial extraction of a stroke from sub-entries:
Radicals sometimes play a phonetic role instead of a semantic one:
| Phonetic part | pinyin | meaning | Character | pinyin | meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 臼 | jiù | "a mortar" | 舅 | jiù | "maternal uncle"[18] |
| 舊 | jiù | "owl; old"[19] | |||
| 虎 | hǔ | "tiger" | 虖 | hū | "shout" |
| 鬼 | guǐ | (originally "helmet"[20]), now "ghost" | 魁 | kúi | "leader" |
| 鹿 | lù | "deer" | 麓 | lù | foothills |
| 麻 | má | "hemp" | 麼 | ma, mó | "tiny" |
| 黃 | huáng | "yellow" | 黌 | hóng | "a school" |
| 羽 | yǔ | "feather" | 翌 | yì | "next"[21] |
| 齊 | qí | "orderly" | 齎 | jī | "to present" |
| 青 | qīng | "verdant" or "youth" | 靖 | jìng | "peaceful" |
| 靚 | jìng | "to ornament; quiet" | |||
| 靜 | jìng | "quiet" |
In some cases, radicals chosen for their phonetic sense also have a coincidental semantic association.[10]
Thecharacter simplification pursued in the People's Republic of China and elsewhere has modified a number of components, including those used as radicals. This has created a number of new radical forms. For instance, the character金;jīn, when used as a radical, is written釒(that is, with the same number of strokes, and only a minor variation) intraditional writing, but钅in simplified characters. This means that simplified writing has resulted in significant differences not present in traditional writing. An example of a character using this radical issimplified Chinese:银;traditional Chinese:銀;pinyin:yín;trans. "silver".
Many dictionaries support using radical classification to index and look up characters, although many present-day dictionaries supplement it with other methods. For example, modern dictionaries in PRC normally use thePinyin transcription of a character to perform character lookup. Following the "section-header-and-stroke-count" method ofMei Yingzuo, characters are listed by their radical and then ordered by the number of strokes needed to write them.
The steps involved in looking up a character are as follows:
As a rule of thumb, components at the left or top of the character, or elements which surround the rest of the character, are the ones most likely to be used as radical. For example,信 is typically indexed under the left-side component人 instead of the right-side言; and套 is typically indexed under the top大 instead of the bottom長. There are, however, idiosyncratic differences between dictionaries, and except for simple cases, the same character cannot be assumed to be indexed the same way in two different dictionaries.
In order to further ease dictionary lookup, dictionaries sometimes list radicals both under the number of strokes used to write their canonical form and under the number of strokes used to write their variant forms. For example, 心 can be listed as a four-stroke radical but might also be listed as a three-stroke radical because it is usually written as 忄 when it forms a part of another character. This means that the dictionary user need not know that the two are etymologically identical.
It is sometimes possible to find one and the same character indexed under multiple radicals. For example, many dictionaries list義 under both羊 and⼽ 'HALBERD' (the radical of its lower part我). Furthermore, with digital dictionaries, it is now possible to search for characters by cross-reference. Using this "multi-component method",[22] a relatively new development enabled by computing technology, the user can selectall of a character's components from a table and the computer will present a list of matching characters. This eliminates the guesswork of choosing the correct radical and calculating the correct stroke count and cuts down searching time. One can query for characters containing both羊 and戈 and get back only five characters (羢, 義, 儀, 羬 and羲) to search through. The Academia Sinica's漢字構形資料庫 Chinese character structure database[23] also works this way, returning only seven characters for this query. Harbaugh's Chinese Characters dictionary[24] similarly allows searches based on any component. Some modern computer dictionaries allow the user to draw characters with a mouse, stylus or finger, ideally tolerating a degree of imperfection, thus eliminating the problem of radical identification altogether.
Though radicals are widely accepted as a method to categorize Chinese characters and locate a certain character in a dictionary, there is no universal agreement about either the exact number of radicals or the set of radicals to be used, due to the sometimes arbitrary nature of the selection process.
TheKangxi radicals are ade facto standard which, although not implemented exactly in every Chinese dictionary, few dictionary compilers can afford to completely ignore. They serve as the basis for many computer encoding systems. Specifically, theUnicode standard's radical-stroke charts are based on the Kangxi set of radicals.
The count of commonly used radicals in modern abridged dictionaries is often less than 214. TheOxford Concise English–Chinese Dictionary has 188. A few dictionaries also introduce new radicals based on the principles first used by Xu Shen, treating groups of radicals that are used together in many different characters as a kind of radical.
In modern practice, radicals are primarily used aslexicographic tools and as learning aids when writing characters. They have become increasingly disconnected fromsemantics,etymology andphonetics.
Some of the radicals used in Chinese dictionaries, even in the era of Kangxi, were not stand-alone current-usage characters. Instead, they indexed unique characters that lacked more obvious qualifiers. The radical鬯 (chàng; "sacrificial wine") indexes only a few characters. Modern dictionaries tend to eliminate these when it is possible to find some more widely used graphic element under which a character can be categorized. Some use a system where characters are indexed under more than one radical and/or set of key elements to make it easier to find them.
The inflected words of European languages are decomposed intoradical andtermination. The radical gives the meaning; the termination indicates case, time, mood. The first sinologists applied those grammatical terms belonging to inflected languages, to the Chinese language which is not an inflected one.[1]
It is important to note that the concepts of semantic element and "section heading" (部首;bùshǒu) are different, and should be clearly distinguished. The semantic element is parallel to the phonetic element in terms of the phonetic compound, while the section heading is a terminology of Chinese lexicography, which is a generic heading for the characters arranged in each section of a dictionary according to the system established by Xu Shen. It is the "head" of a section, assigned for convenience only. Thus, a section heading is usually the element common to all characters belonging to the same section. (Cf. L. Wang, 1962:1.151). The semantic elements of phonetic compounds were usually also used as section headings. However, characters in the same section are not necessarily all phonetic compounds. ...In some sections, such as品 pin3 "the masses" (S. Xu 1963:48) and爪 zhua3 "a hand" (S. Xu 1963:63), no phonetic compound is incorporated. In other words, the section heading was not commonly used as a semantic element...To sum up, the selection of a section heading is to some extent arbitrary.[15]
Simplified Chinese charactersradicals (indexing components) | |
|---|---|
| 1 stroke | |
| 2 strokes | |
| 3 strokes | |
| 4 strokes | |
| 5 strokes | |
| 6 strokes | |
| 7 strokes | |
| 8 strokes | |
| 9 strokes | |
| 10 strokes | |
| 11 strokes | |
| 12 strokes | |
| 13 strokes | |
| 14 strokes |
|
| 17 strokes |
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GF 0011-2009 Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components prescribes 201 principle indexing components and 100 associated indexing components (in brackets) used in Simplified Chinese. Not all associated indexing components are listed above. | |
