1.2 Research method

There are more than 200 Chinese character radicals existent so far. Therefore, it is too hard for the auther to study and analyze all of them. This thesis will focus on those radicals in free or semi-free morphemes which are more meaningful and easy to understand. Furthermore, among this kind of radicals, only those common, practical and typical radicals will be parsed. At first, all free or semi-free monosyllabic morphemes will be picked out from all Chinese characters. Secondly, all picked-out free or semi-free morphemes will be classified into several groups according to their part of speech, nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs mainly. Thirdly, in accordance with radical classification, all characters in each group will be pided into more specific parts. Finally, the functional changes in pronunciation, form and meaning will be analyzed after radicals added to the original roots in the second part. An example of the classification is presented below. The complete classification is presented at the end of the thesis seen as appendix.