A Preliminary Study of the Line Grapheme in Naxi Dongba Script
This article presents a preliminary study of the "line" (线) as a graphemic element in the Naxi Dongba pictographic script. Drawing examples from Fang Guoyu's "Naxi Pictographic Character Compendium" (纳西象形文字谱), the author, Deng Zhangying, classifies lines according to their structural role: as independent characters, as semantic or phonetic components within compound characters, or as non-independent structural elements within a single character or component. The study focuses on "independent lines"—those that can stand alone as characters or components with relatively autonomous meaning. It further categorizes these lines semantically into groups denoting ropes/strings, sticks/rods, roads, liquids/secretions, and smoke. The author argues that Dongba line-graphemes evolved from pictorial representations into more abstract symbols, developed rich variant forms, and underwent semantic bleaching (grammaticalization), demonstrating that Dongba script constitutes a mature, systematic writing system rather than a purely pictographic one.
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