Abstract：From the end of the 20th century, the research of characters of Early Mandarin has made great progress. Large-scale dictionary compilation most reflects the application value of characters of Early Mandarin. Taking the Hanyu Da Zidian (Zidian) as an example, the significance of Early Mandarin character research can be fully explained from six aspects, i.e., selection of characters, formal fixation, phonetic transcription, definitions of words, interpretations of the inter-character relationship, and verification.The selection of characters refers to which characters can be listed as head entries. Large dictionaries generally expand the scope of character collection on the basis of previous dictionaries, and then supplement items that were not collected in the previous dictionaries by drawing from surviving literature and unearthed texts. All characters with clear pronunciation and meaning that appear in the literature should generally be included. Moreover, the national normative documents regarding language and characters also serve as a reference for the collection of characters in large-scale dictionaries. As character research of Early Mandarin continues to develop, we have discovered that many variant colloquial characters with clear meanings and pronunciations in ancient literature have not been included in the Zidian. However, some head entries that do not conform to the standard principles and are created by the abuse of radicals and analogy have been included. These should be removed.Formal fixation is to establish a standard glyph for each group of variant characters. The glyphs and normative principles in the The General Standard Chinese Characters Table Printing in Ancient Books (Characters Table) released in 2021 are also guiding for the establishment of a normative glyph for large dictionaries in the future. There are far more characters in large-scale dictionaries than the Characters Table, those unincluded characters can be analogized according to the glyphs and normative principles of the Characters Table. At the same time, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the generation sequence and popularity of each glyph.Phonetic transcription is also an important task for lexicographers. The Zidian still has some problems in terms of phonetics. For example, there are some difficult words that are not annotated. Errors are also produced in transmission and compilation. Character research of Early Mandarin helps to solve these problems.Definition is the most important part of dictionary compilation. With the vigorous development of Early Mandarin character research and the expansion of the scope of research literature, many difficult characters without definitions in the Zidian have been satisfactorily explained. Some difficult meanings of many characters also have been convincingly verified, and some new words and meanings have been discovered. These results are of great reference value for improving the compilation quality of large dictionary.It is an extremely challenging task to sort out the inter-character relationship in the compilation of dictionaries. There are four kinds of relationships between Chinese characters: variant forms, derived forms, homographs and borrowed forms. However, these relations are often not simple one-to-one correspondences between characters, each corresponding to different character relationships s. They are all important tasks of Early Mandarin character research to associate variant characters, distinguish homographs, reveal borrowed forms, and explore the origins of derived characters. In recent years, the achievements are remarkable in those fields, which is helpful to continuously improve the compilation quality of large-scale dictionaries.Evidence includes documentary evidence and example evidence. An ideal dictionary should provide the earliest documentation for each character and find the most appropriate example for each meaning, including the earliest and latest cases. However, due to the lack of documentation, this is not easy. Taking the Zidian as an example, there are still many characters that lack documentary evidence or the documentary evidence is too late; many meanings lack examples or the examples are too late, and even some examples are inaccurate. The large amount of documentary evidence and examples unearthed by character research of Early Mandarin can make up for the deficiencies of the existing large dictionaries.It is an important direction for Early Mandarin character research to solve all kinds of problems in the existing large dictionaries.
韩小荆, 邓福禄. 近代汉字研究与大型字书编纂例说[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2025, 55(1): 103-121.
Han Xiaojing, Deng Fulu. A Case Study of Chinese Characters Research and Large-scale Dictionary Compilation. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2025, 55(1): 103-121.
2025, Vol. 55 
