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Abstract. Beyond the dominant representation regarding the Chinese characters (sinograms) and its supposed “ideography” among the general public, learners, and (still many) teachers, this paper addresses the semanticity of the Chinese graphic system. We tackle this assumption and investigate the consistency of semantic clues embedded in the sinograms compositions. After a brief overview of principles of the economy of the Chinese graphic system, and the typology of the different functions of components, it is reported how probabilistic and graph-based models were designed in order to assess the semantic contribution of the 214 canonical “radicals”. Results show that if extit{some} semanticity cannot be denied, it concerns a few among not the more frequent components. Discussion then addresses the relevance of the consistency of the semanticity of the system and what is at stake with such a focus for learning and teaching sinograms.

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Pierre Magistry & Yoann Goudin[0000-0002-0522-8261] (2022), “Semanticity in the Chinese Graphic System. Modeling and Assessing its consistency,” in Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2022 (Yannis Haralambous, Ed.), Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, Vol. 10, Brest: Fluxus Editions, 671–688.


@INPROCEEDINGS{gla10-magi,
   AUTHOR = {Pierre Magistry & Yoann Goudin},
   EDITOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {{Semanticity in the Chinese Graphic System. Modeling and Assessing its consistency}},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2022}},
   SERIES = {{Grapholinguistics and Its Applications}},
   VOLUME = {10},
   PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions},
   ADDRESS = {Brest},
   YEAR = {2022},
   PAGES = {671--688},
   DOI = {https://doi.org/10.36824/2022-graf-magi},
}