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The character 狳 is a phono-semantic compound with the animal radical 犭 on the left, indicating a mammal or beast, and the phonetic 余 on the right. Like its counterpart 犰, 狳 is a bound morpheme only used in the disyllabic noun 犰狳, the standard Chinese name for the armadillo. This character exemplifies a method for incorporating exotic fauna into the written language: a semantic radical that signals the animal category is paired with a phonetic element to approximate a foreign name, creating nomenclature for species without precedent in traditional Chinese geographical knowledge.
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