[Language Studies]
This article examines the "graphemes" (zisu) of the Ersu Shaba script, a pictographic writing system used by Shaba priests of the Ersu people in western Sichuan for religious rituals, discovered in the early 1980s and often compared to the Naxi Dongba script due to similar religious origins and structural features. Applying Li Pu's grapheme theory—originally developed for Shang oracle-bone inscriptions, where a grapheme is the smallest structural unit unifying form, sound, and meaning—the author identifies 39 basic graphemes among the roughly 100-plus known Shaba characters. Analysis shows these graphemes are far fewer and less varied than those in oracle-bone or Dongba scripts, and compound characters ("fusu zi") formed from multiple graphemes are rare. Crucially, no "active graphemes" (those formed by combining stable graphemes and capable of further recombination) were found, indicating that Shaba script's word-formation capacity is extremely limited—even weaker than Dongba script.
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