ABSTRACT

This essay is divided into five sections. The main discourse falls in the second, third, and fourth sections. The second section focuses on the question of whether a character's borrowed meaning is related to its original meaning and whether barrowing is born out of creating a character or using a character. In addition to commenting on different opinions, I analyse the theory of Hsu Shen. The third section concentrates on the broad and the narrow definition of borrowing and then gives a more complete description to the meaning of borrowing. The fourth section brings up the characteristics of borrowing, which are: 1. based on the condition of pronunciation. 2. having nothing to do with original and derivative meanings. 3. having no relation with the structure of the character. 4. having the most difficult meaning to decipher.