| Acknowledgements | 第1-7页 |
| Abstract | 第7-10页 |
| 内容摘要 | 第10-13页 |
| Chapter One Introduction | 第13-21页 |
| ·Background of the study | 第13-17页 |
| ·Purposes of the study | 第17-20页 |
| ·A shift of study on Chinese characters from traditional disembodiment to embodiment perspective | 第17-19页 |
| ·Fathoming the specific mechanisms of the formation of Chinese characters | 第19-20页 |
| ·Methodology of the study | 第20页 |
| ·Organization of the thesis | 第20-21页 |
| Chapter Two Literature Review on the Study of Chinese Pictophonetic Characters | 第21-29页 |
| ·The outline of the development of Chinese characters | 第21-22页 |
| ·The overall principles of the creation of Chinese characters | 第22-23页 |
| ·The specific mechanism of the formation of Chinese characters:six scripts | 第23-25页 |
| ·The appearence of pictophonetic characters | 第25-26页 |
| ·The image-graph of a pictophonetic character | 第26-27页 |
| ·The phonetic-form component of a pictophonetic character | 第27-28页 |
| ·Summary | 第28-29页 |
| Chapter Three The Specific Mechanisms of the Creation of Chinese Characters | 第29-41页 |
| ·Iconicity | 第29-30页 |
| ·Conceptual metaphor | 第30-31页 |
| ·The interaction between iconicity and metaphor | 第31-32页 |
| ·Idealized cognitive models (ICMs) and human experiences | 第32-34页 |
| ·Conceptual metonymy | 第34-37页 |
| ·The theory of conceptual blending | 第37-40页 |
| ·Summary | 第40-41页 |
| Chapter Four The Analysis of Pictophonetic Characters | 第41-78页 |
| ·Introduction | 第41页 |
| ·A study on the radicals of Chinese PCs:pictograms | 第41-48页 |
| ·Pictograms as rudiment and active role in the formation of Chinese characters | 第41-42页 |
| ·The categories of the radical of Chinese PCs | 第42-48页 |
| ·Consideration on the radicals of PCs from the perspective of philosophy | 第48-56页 |
| ·The diachronic study of the formation Chinese PCs | 第56-66页 |
| ·The outstanding features of Chinese pictograms:iconicity | 第56-60页 |
| ·Cooperation of icoriicity and metaphor in the formation of the radicals | 第60-61页 |
| ·The application of conceptual metonymy in the process of pursuit of iconicity in the formation of radicals of PCs | 第61-64页 |
| ·The formation of PCs | 第64-66页 |
| ·The generation of the meaning of a PC | 第66-77页 |
| ·The analysis of endocentric PCs | 第67-70页 |
| ·PCs containing an appositional part to the whole | 第67页 |
| ·PCs with a semantic head component and used as hypernym | 第67-70页 |
| ·The analysis of exocentric PCs | 第70-73页 |
| ·Exocentric PCs with a semantic zero sound-form | 第70-71页 |
| ·Exocentric PCs with a meaningful sound-form | 第71-73页 |
| ·The analysis of the generation of the meaning of an exocentric PC | 第73-77页 |
| ·Summary | 第77-78页 |
| Chapter Five Conclusion | 第78-82页 |
| ·Major findings | 第78-80页 |
| ·Limitations of ths study | 第80页 |
| ·Suggestions for future study | 第80-82页 |
| References | 第82-84页 |
