Glyph origin of 蝠

Question

Wiktionary states that 蝠 was originally a pictogram in the oracle bone and bronze scripts before changing to a phono-semantic compound (semantic 虫 + phonetic 畐).

1. In a case like this, are the pictogram and phono-semantic compound completely unrelated in shape? (Contrasting this with the evolution of e.g. 虫.)

2. Is 畐 strictly phonetic? I found an (unsourced) Japanese blog post that suggests the 扁 and 畐 in 蝙蝠 have meanings of 'flat' and 'cling to', respectively (conveying the meaning of 'animal that clings to flat walls').

Answer 1

Wiktionary is primarily a word dictionary, and as such, some of its phrasing around glyph origins (which is a character-oriented study) may not be clear. The same unclear description issues appear in numerous other characters, like Glyph origin of 「四」, where it is implied that 「亖」 evolved into 「四」 (which is not true, as the 2 characters are unrelated). I would rephrase the section like this:

Here, we clarify that the character 「蝠」 did not evolve from a pictogram of a bat (we'll use 「🦇」 from now on); no component of 「蝠」 is related to 「🦇」.

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To answer the queries:

In a case like this, are the pictogram and phono-semantic compound completely unrelated in shape?

In this case, 「蝠」 and 「🦇」 are completely unrelated in shape. We don't really even know what word 「🦇」 is supposed to represent, as it's used sparsely in the late Shāng period as a proper noun on ritual vessels.

Generally speaking, you can only determine the pronunciation of a pictogram (and thus determine the actual word it represents) if it appears in (1) continuous transmission of texts throughout historical periods of China or (2) poetry rhymes. 「🦇」 has neither historical continuity nor appearances in a poem, with 「🦇」 appearing in the Shāng period and then abruptly falling out of use.

This is not to say that pictograms do not have related phono-semantic compounds, or that those that don't have any relation can't be pronounced:

• 「州」 (islet) was originally a picture of an islet in the middle of a body of water; the word represented by this character is now written using the phono-semantic compound 「洲」.

• 「輪」 (spoked wheel, e.g. of a chariot) is a phono-semantic compound. There is peripheral evidence that the Shāng pictogram 「🛞」

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  (which is an unrelated character) nevertheless represented the same word as 「輪」; see e.g. the glyph evolution of 「雷」 (thunder, variously comprised of semantic 「申」 (lightning, now written 「電」), 「雨」 (rain), and 「畾」 (multiple 「🛞」 indicating rolling chariot wheels, suggesting a thundering noise)).

Is 畐 strictly phonetic? I found an (unsourced) blog post that suggests the 扁 and 畐 in 蝙蝠 have meanings of 'flat' and 'cling to', respectively (conveying the meaning of 'animal that clings to flat walls').

Since they don't reveal sources or reveal how they came up with this, the default position is "yes, 「扁」 and 「畐」 are purely phonetic".

It pays to go through the same motions as scientific methodology with such a claim. I don't know where 「畐」 suggesting the meaning cling to comes from, but 「蝙」 related to 「扁」 (meaning flat and thin) is worth investigating. The available data used to test such claims is in the form of variant spellings.

At this point, they should do a search for variant spellings of the word through historical literature:

• Has 「蝙蝠」 ever been spelt with 「扁」? If they can't reference any, then you should reject the alternative hypothesis, that 「扁」 is semantic in 「蝙」;
• One of the alternative words for bat 「蝙蝠」 (Zhengzhang OC: /*peːn pɯɡ/) is 「服翼」 (/*bɯɡ lɯɡ/), indicating that /*pɯɡ/ is a morpheme for the meaning bat. By itself, this casts doubt that 「畐」 has a strong semantic link to bat. Can they then find a concrete word reconstructed as /*bɯɡ/ or /*pɯɡ/ meaning to cling, spelt as 「畐」 or a derivative character? If they can't, then you should reject the alternative hypothesis, that 「畐」 is semantic in 「蝠」.

Answer 2

To get things out of the way, let me first explain the etymology for 蝠.

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蝠 (PY: fú; kind of bat) indeed appeared to be a pictograph of an actual bat during the bronze script. However though, this was later changed to a phonosemantic character during the small seal script that's composed of the following components:

• 虫 was originally a pictograph of a snake viewed from a bird's eye view, indicating the original meaning "venomous snake". Here, 虫 (venomous snake; insect) is a meaning component. The reason why 虫 was chosen for this character likely because since the character refers to a kind of bat, this component was chosen to refer to the fact that bats are a type of animal/mammal.
• 畐 originally depicted a type of drinking vessel that's filled with wine, here originally meaning "wine vessel". Here, 畐 (fú [or bì]) is a sound component.

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As for your questions,

• 1. Pictograms and phonosemantic characters aren't necessarily unrelated in shape. This kind of phenomenon happens sometimes due to in fact that the pictograph might corrupt into components over time. This happens sometimes with characters with the 虫 component (e.g. 虹, 蛛) since over time when the same character is written, the character's pictographic quality just starts becoming into recognizable components when written the same overtime with 虫 being added as meaning component most of the time. This kind of thing also happens in other characters such as 秋 and 雞. So in conclusion this answer, they aren't necessarily unrelated but rather the pictograph quality just shifts to a phonosemantic character overtime when writers write the same character over and over again.
• 2. For most characters I've seen, yes, 畐 is always seen as a phonetic component. This component is mostly seen a lot of the time to provide sound to the character rather than just meaning component. As for the explanations you provided from the blog posts, it seems the authors ignore the fact that 扁 and 畐 are sound components. Sure you can use the sound components meanings and origins for mnemonics, just know that it doesn't always work when you're explaining the character etymologically since sound components in phonosemantic characters will mostly provide the pronunciation most of the time. (Some characters have sound components that also act as meaning components, such as the 昏 in 婚.)

I hope all of this will answer your questions :)

Sources used:

• Dong Chinese
• Outlier Linguistics Dictionary of Chinese Characters
• 小學堂 (xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw)
• 漢語多功能字庫