The Influence of Hollow-Type Characters on the Character Order of Dongba Script and Their Evolution
This article examines how "hollow-type characters" (中空型字符) — Dongba pictographs with a large internal blank space — cause character order to diverge from word order in Naxi Dongba scriptures. Building on four previously identified causes of such mismatches (motivated and pseudo-motivated iconicity, semantic highlighting, layout balance), the author uses glossed manuscript examples (mountain-peak passages, house and colophon dating formulas, tent-pitching scenes, place names) to show scribes routinely write adjacent characters into a hollow-type character's empty space, the number depending on the hollow's size — distinct from hollow-filling compound characters and ordinary ligatures. Over time, hollow-type characters change three ways: becoming non-hollow and no longer absorbing neighbors; fusing with a phonetic complement into a phonetic-annotating (hollow-filling compound) character; or keeping their hollow shape while losing their absorbing function once a phonetic complement is added elsewhere. The first two restore exact correspondence; the third yields only approximate correspondence, reflecting Dongba script's evolution toward clearer boundaries and tighter word-order alignment.
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