An Analysis of the Developmental Trend from Recording Speech Segments to Recording Words in Dongba Script
This article examines how Dongba script characters used to record speech segments (语段) evolved toward recording individual words (语词). While earlier scholars (Fu Maoxun, Fang Guoyu) noted that Dongba characters could represent single syllables, whole phrases, or whole sentences, they offered only descriptive observations without diachronic analysis. Drawing on examples from "Nine Annotated Moso Classics" and "Complete Annotated Naxi Dongba Manuscripts," the author classifies segment-recording characters into two types based on completeness: the "elliptical" type, where a written character represents only one syllable or word of a longer multisyllabic segment while readers recall the remaining unwritten syllables through convention and mnemonic association; and the "inclusive/embedding" type, where a single character graphically encodes a semantically compact multi-word segment (e.g., through iconic deformation representing modifier-head relations like "mountaintop/mid-slope/foot"). The paper argues elliptical forms tend to develop by gradually supplementing unrecorded syllables, while inclusive forms follow more complex trajectories. The fundamental driving force behind this development is the principle of one-character-one-syllable correspondence.
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