Zhao Yuanren's semiotic factors and contemporary influences

Zhao Yuanren is a pioneer of modern Chinese linguistics and is known as the "father of modern Chinese linguistics"; he is also a pioneer of modern Chinese musicology, a pioneer of chinese musical linguistics, and one of the founders of the "Chinese Science Society". In 1926, at the age of 34, Zhao Yuanren published an article entitled "Outline of Semiotics" in the magazine "Science" that he co-founded with his colleagues, and officially proposed the name "Semiotics" in the Chinese-speaking world. Zhao Yuanren believes that the symbol thing is very old, but no one has yet done this thing to study the universal principles of its various properties and usage by taking all symbols as a topic. In this article, Zhao Yuanren openly and explicitly put forward the difference between Chinese "semiotics" and English "symbolics" and "symbolology", arguing that both semiotics in English have a philosophy of emphasizing symbols, while the semiotics he is discussing is ordinary semiotics. Since it is ordinary semiotics, it is necessary to study the general laws of various symbolic principles, so communication language symbols and musical symbols have become the meaning of Zhao Yuanren's ordinary semiotics. Wu Zongji's account in the preface to the Collected Papers on The Linguistics of Zhao Yuanren shows that Zhao Yuanren was very sorry that his early research papers on the problems of continuous inflection and intonation pitch in Chinese were lacking measurements related to musical instruments.

　　China's academic circles unanimously agree on the importance of Zhao Yuanren's proposal of the "semiotic" nomenclature in the Chinese-speaking world, but they do not systematically dig deep into the deep direction of this naming, and do not notice what kind of national characteristics the semiotics proposed by Zhao Yuanren have. Zhao Yuanren's ordinary semiotics contains deep artistic factors, which need to be analyzed in conjunction with his cross-border development of linguistic musicology; at the same time, at the academic level, the influence of Zhao Yuanren's ordinary semiotics on contemporary semiotics research can be clarified in order to inject deep impetus into the world significance of Chinese semiotics from the source.

　　The qualities of symbols are the first factor to consider in semiotics. The qualities of art constitute the basic original intention of ordinary semiotics. One of the most basic goals set by Zhao Yuanren for semiotics is to break down the barriers of disciplines and research and create "good symbols" that can be used universally. In the article "Outline of Semiotics", Zhao Yuanren believes that although the symbol system in some studies is very developed, in other studies, he has studied topics that are very similar to the former in terms of facts, and has not adopted or imitated it, and only knows how to use very stupid symbols. The first example given by Zhao Yuanren is that due to the lack of relevant research on phonetics in rehearsal, the writing method of the playbook cannot write the playing method and the trick of obtaining the gods at a glance. Therefore, what kind of symbol to use has become the primary consideration of Zhao Yuanren's semiotics. We can analyze the requirements of "semiotics" for the beauty of "symbols" put forward by Zhao Yuanren from the three perspectives of Chinese character shape, sound and meaning.

　　First of all, from the perspective of the glyphs of Chinese characters, the formation of characters as unique symbols of the Chinese language is the fundamental basis for Zhao Yuanren's research on semiotics. From the perspective of symbols, Chinese character symbols are typical square characters, which are different from the temporality reflected in the linear writing of pinyin characters, and the shape of Chinese characters reflects the architectural beauty of space. Compared with the arbitrariness of the formation of pinyin characters, there is no absolute arbitrariness between the writing of Chinese characters and the references, and the appearance should refer to the original appearance of objective things. Zhao Yuanren believes that a good symbol system is easy to be recognized, which makes the seemingly complex Chinese character structure an advantage, because once the Chinese character system is learned, its rich patterns are helpful to identify, which is superior to reproducing the same small number of elements many times, and is easy to produce, transmit and copy. In addition, the two-way arrangement of Chinese character strokes is of great significance in Zhao Yuanren's view, allowing for diversity in design structure, which can save a lot of space and speed up reading. The super stability of Chinese characters has enabled the precise preservation of national culture, and until now, we can still accurately read ancient characters. Although the pronunciation of Chinese characters varies greatly due to the dialects of different regions, there is a chinese language, and the chinese language has become a common script of a nation, which not only exists on the paper that relies on the intervention of visual experience, but also exists in the user's mouth, which is the "official dialect" formed by the Chinese language of the past. Therefore, the existence of the literary language not only has the nature of the written language, but also the nature of the rules of language. The Chinese character character itself has its own unique "spatial syntax", and the interstitial structure of the font has different requirements in different writing styles, which is calligraphy.

　　Secondly, in terms of the pronunciation of Chinese characters, Zhao Yuanren inherited the research of his predecessors on Chinese phonetic rhythms, and created original linguistic musicology, mainly focusing on the organic continuity between music and language sound laws. In "Talking about the Symbol System of Chinese", Zhao Yuanren begins with Cen Shan's poem "Bai Xue Song Sending the Military Judge Back to Beijing" to discuss the unspoken meaning of Chinese intonation and rhyme in terms of symbolism. Zhao Yuanren believes that in this poem, the first two sentences, "The north wind sweeps the ground and the grass folds, and Hu Tian august is flying snow", the syllables end with a forced sound, symbolizing the scene of the withering of all things when winter comes; the last two sentences" suddenly like a night spring breeze, a thousand trees and pear blossoms, end with a smooth flat word, which can also symbolize the revival of all things in spring. There is what Pierce calls "like symbols" in sound. Because each word in Chinese has its own tone, and the words of different tones form an organic whole in a poem or a sentence, the tone of the word is added to the ups and downs of the tone, much like the microwave on the waves, forming a very dynamic flow of sound, which is a very beautiful language.

　　Third, from the perspective of the semantics of Chinese symbols, the generating mechanism of symbol system meaning, Zhao Yuanren believes that the way of semantic formation of Chinese character symbols is association. Symbols are perceptions that carry meaning, but the way of perception is different in Chinese and Western semiotics. The signifier and the signifier collocation of each symbol in Saussure's symbology are absolutely arbitrary, and it is this arbitrariness that guarantees the stability of social regulations. That is to say, the social function of symbols and the meaning framework of symbols are mainly determined by the social normative relationships, and less infiltrate the association of artistic factors. The Pierce semiotic system believes that the logical relationship between symbols and objects is a kind of scientific cognitive quality, and more attention is paid to the formal relationship between symbols and thinking, emphasizing its logical function. Zhao Yuanren believes that the way of symbols and objects is "association", and the deeper the degree of association, the more effective the symbol is, and uses musical symbols as an example to demonstrate. One of the important results of symbolic associations is to evoke emotions, and the symbols of beauty are especially important when it comes to evoking emotions. It can be said that Zhao Yuanren's definition of the generation mechanism of symbolic meaning has obvious aesthetic psychology tendencies.

　　A special difference between the general semiotics proposed by Zhao Yuanren and the Semiotics of the West is that although his semiotics are also classified into the field of philosophy, due to the artistic characteristics of the Chinese symbols themselves, as well as Zhao Yuanren's own profound language skills and musical literacy, Chinese semiotics carries a strong artistic factor, reflects distinct artistic characteristics, and has also had a profound impact on the world. The Finnish scholar Erki Peckile wrote in the preface to Music, Media, Symbols: A Collection of Musical Semiotics: "Zhao Yuanren once studied the relationship between music and language... In Chinese, there are at least four forms of media between language and music, so there is no clear boundary between language and music, and they are more like a continuous unity. "The linguistic musicology pioneered by Zhao Yuanren is earlier than the musical semiotics proposed by Western scholars with the help of information technology, and it is more closely integrated with the Chinese language itself, and has a more far-reaching impact on national culture." In China's traditional culture, there are close links between speech, poetry, emotion, music, music and song. In the "Preface to Mao's Poems", it is recorded: "Emotions originate in sound, and sound is written as a sound." The Book of Music says, "All sounds arise from the human heart, and the movement of the human heart makes things so natural." "Sound and sound are two different symbols, from sound marks to sound marks, and emotion runs through them, and words are the transition between sound and sound. As an important category of Classical Aesthetics in China, "rhyme", such as the "vivid rhyme" of classical dance, the "body rhyme" of classical dance, and the "spiritual rhyme" in western aesthetics that we translate, from the etymology, are all related to music, "rhyme" from the sound from the uniform, its original meaning is the measurement and approval of the sound, and its measurement and approval role or according to the above, inferred to make the five tones "have their own place" of the harmonious state. Music is mainly aural art, in addition to the study of Western semiotics of symbols, symbols and symbols, Chinese language musicology is to move towards sound through text, and it is necessary to find the most compatible rhythmic match with music through the study of language sound characteristics. This is undoubtedly a correction for the transfer of semiotics from the center of text to the center of vision, and is also in line with contemporary art's promotion of a full range of physical experiences.

　　The modern division of disciplines has deepened research, but it has also caused a narrowing of research; integrated poetry and dance have been divided into literature, musicology, and dance. Semiotics research looks for the "general law" of art, and language musicology can combine artificial intelligence, computational linguistics and other related disciplines in future research to move towards more in-depth and extensive research. Therefore, whether it is semiotic research or music semiotics research, we should fully excavate the rich academic heritage left by Zhao Yuanren and provide professional national discourse resources and theoretical growth points for the construction of The Chinese school.

　　(This paper is a phased result of the major special project of the National Social Science Foundation of China "Research on the Basic Theoretical Problems of Aesthetics with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era" (18VXK010))

　　(Author Affilications:College of Literature, Minzu University of China)

Source: China Social Science Network - China Social Science Daily Author: Quiet