On the Explanatory Power of Conceptual Integration Theory for the Formation of Compound Characters in Naxi Dongba Script
Duan Hong applies Fauconnier and Turner's Conceptual Integration (blending) Theory to explain how Naxi Dongba compound characters (about 7.9% of the 2,288 basic characters catalogued by Yu Suisheng) construct new meaning from two or more component characters, moving beyond traditional Chinese-grammatology structural classification (Six/Ten/Three Categories theories) that describes form but not the cognitive process of meaning-making. The article identifies four types of semantic composition, each with worked examples: perceptual-binding compounds (e.g., 'eye'+'red' > red eye), correlation compounds, both spatial (e.g., 'house'+'household god' > ancestral hall) and functional (e.g., 'needle'+'thread'), causation compounds (e.g., 'fire'+'hillside' > to burn the hillside, via a result-for-cause metonymy), and metaphor compounds based on human-body-to-object mapping (e.g., 'tree'+'bone' > tree trunk; 'tree'+'foot' > tree root). The author concludes that Dongba compound-character formation, as a still-primitive stage of word-formation compared to Chinese characters, offers a valuable test case for the theory's explanatory reach, and has implications for comparative philology and linguistic typology.
This page publishes the bibliographic record and the project's summary. The scanned article text belongs to its publisher and is shown to readers under a research-use policy; it is not reproduced in this record.