Three Notes on the Comparative Study of Oracle-Bone and Bronze Inscriptions and Dongba Script
In this set of three philological notes, Yu Suisheng compares oracle-bone/bronze inscriptions with Naxi Dongba script on three points: how each script uses purely ideographic (non-phonetic) means to represent sound, as in onomatopoeic graphs like "peng" (drum) or "huo" (birds in flight) and Dongba analogues for exclamations and the hiss of quenched iron; the widespread phenomenon of a single graph being read aloud multiple times, illustrated with oracle-bone examples of omitted repeated characters and Dongba examples where a graph for "white" or "cloud" may be chanted six or even ten times in one line; and the contrasting vertical elongation of oracle-bone script, attributed to bamboo-slip writing conventions, versus the horizontal, sometimes page-spanning extension of Dongba characters, tied to Dongba script's three-register horizontal page format.
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