Chinese characters through the prism of the semantic triangle

This article considers the sign nature of the Chinese character using the semantic triangle by Ogden and Richards. Studying the semantic structure of the Chinese character is important as although the differences between ideographic and phonetic writings are obvious there is a tendency to ignore them in linguistic research, whereas phenomena observed in the sphere of Chinese characters functioning (varied readings of the character or combinations thereof, including those assigned arbitrarily, possible or even necessary use of a character in isolation from its readings) are described, but are not explained theoretically. The scheme of the Chinese character based on the semantic triangle model by Ogden and Richards allows us to represent in an abstract form and describe different types of characters (pictograms, primary ideograms, phonoideograms) as well as the mechanisms of some grammatologic phenomena (the phonetic rebus, ateji, amorphemic semantic writing, translinguographic translation, homography in Chinese characters). The analysis presents the Chinese character as a complex sign having two planes of expression, with the relationship between them being poorly motivated or not motivated at all from the viewpoint of a user nowadays. This feature sharply contrasts the Chinese characters with the phonetic writing.