Wang Li's "Ancient Chinese": "Can refer to the phonetic symbols and the radicals are unified. Because ideographic characters of pictophonetic characters are also radicals in physical structure, all ideographic characters can be used as radicals in principle, but radicals are not necessarily ideographic characters of pictophonetic characters. There is a simple reason. First, the characters belonging to radicals are not necessarily pictophonetic characters. Such as negative, redundant, qualitative and other words. And the words plan, discuss and establish; Secondly, because some radicals themselves are not ideographic characters of pictophonetic characters, such as radicals, music, music and so on. There are no pictophonetic characters under such radicals. But judging from Shuowen, pictophonetic characters account for more than 80% of the total number of words. In most cases, we can say that radicals are ideograms. "

Zhang Tongbiao thinks:

First, a single word has no radicals, only radicals.

Second, the radicals of compound words are generally acted by signifiers.

Third, the capital of a ministry is radical, but radical is not necessarily radical.

Fourthly, the common words in Shuowen are related to the meaning of radicals, while the radicals in modern Chinese are not necessarily related to the meaning. For example, smell, boredom and doubt belong to the ear, heart and mouth, and modernity belongs to the introductory department.

Fifth, the capitalization of Shuowen is an independent word.

Sixth, the radical of Shuowen is the basic unit of word formation, not the smallest unit. For example, Yan, Xiang and Yuan are all radical.

The author emphasizes:

(1) All words have radicals unless they are radicals themselves, such as the word "big".

(2) Only compound words have radicals, and all compound words have radicals unless they are radicals themselves, such as the word "feather".

(3) In pictophonetic characters, ideographic radicals are pictophonetic characters. There are exceptions:

1. A few pictophonetic characters also have ideographic functions, but they cannot be called pictophonetic characters, such as "four".

2. The ideographic radicals in a few pictophonetic characters are also regarded as ideographic radicals. For example, "ball" is written as "ball", and "hair" is ideographic and is a standard ideographic radical. Write "ball" just for convenience, "king" doesn't mean anything, but it is still used as a shape.

(4) At least the following situations are radical but not radical (different from the third viewpoint of Zhang Tongbiao):

1, the radical of a single word, for example, history is the radical of a thing, but it is not radical, and the word of a thing has no radical.

2. Take the radical as big and the radical as small. For example, the radical is strong and the radical is strong.

3. The radical is small and the radical is big. For example, the thief's side is Ge, and the side is Rong.

4. The radicals are not the components of words, such as the components of fat, the radicals are meat, and the radicals can only carry words.