While Chinese characters generally function as logograms, three of the six classes in the traditional classification are ideographic (or semantographic) in origin, as they have no phonetic component: Pictograms ( ) are generally among the oldest characters, with forms dating to the 12th century BC. Generally, with the evolution of the script, the forms of pictographs became less directly representational, to the extent that their referents are no longer plausible to intuit. Examples include 'field'，and 'heart'. Indicatives ( ) like 'up' and 'down', or numerals like 'three'. Ideographic compounds ( ) have a meaning synthesized from several other characters, such as 'bright', a compound of 'Sun' and 'Moon', or 'rest', composed of 'person' and 'tree'. As the understanding of Old Chinese phonology developed during the second half of the 20th century, many researchers became convinced that the etymology of most characters originally thought to be ideographic compounds actually included some phonetic component.
While Chinese characters generally function as logograms three of the six classes in the traditional classification are ideographic (or semantographic) in origin, as they have no phonetic component: Pictograms ( ) are generally among the oldest characters, with forms dating to the 12th century BC. Generally, with the evolution o,f the script, the forms of pictographs became less directly representational, to the extent that their referents are no longer plausible to intuit. Examples include 'field'，and 'heart'. Indicatives ( ) like 'up' and 'down', or numerals like 'three'. Ideographic compounds ( ) have a meaning synthesized from several other characters, such as 'bright', a compound of 'Sun' and 'Moon', or 'rest', composed of 'person' and 'tree'. As the understanding of Old Chinese phonology developed during the second half of the 20th century, many researchers became convinced that the etymology of most characters originally thought to be ideographic compounds actually included some phonetic component.