A Study of Synonymous Replacement in Naxi Dongba Script
This article by Yu Suisheng, preceded by an editorial note introducing a themed journal section on the linguistics of the Dongba scriptures, defines and studies 'synonymous replacement' (tongyi huandu): cases where a Dongba character is written as A but actually chanted as a different character B of the same or similar meaning. Distinguishing this from ancient/modern, dialectal, loanword, and word-formation variant readings, and from ordinary phonetic borrowing or semantic extension, the author gives examples at both the word/character level (nouns, locatives, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, numeral-classifiers, function words) and the sentence level, drawn from the Complete Annotated Translation of Naxi Dongba Ancient Texts and other classic sources. It argues synonymous replacement is a temporary pragmatic phenomenon rooted in the gap between a conservatively transmitted script and live oral recitation, shows how misreading it has led past scholars into error, and situates the phenomenon alongside parallel cases in Chinese, Sino-Vietnamese, and Shui script.
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