也谈表意文字与词文字、语素文字的关系——兼与郑振峰先生商榷

Talking about Relation of Ideographic Writing between Word Writing and Morpheme Writing ——Consultation with Mr.Zheng Zhen-feng

本文旨在澄清汉字性质认识上的一些误区。汉字是表意体系的文字,包括词文字和语素文字。古代汉字是词文字,现代汉字是语素文字。把表意文字理解为"以形表意"的文字是一种误解,认为汉字中的"字"与拉丁文字中的"字母"不可比的观点是错误的。文字的性质取决于文字系统中的单个符号和语言单位的对应关系。

This paper aims to clear up some misunderstandings about the nature of Chinese-writing system. Chinese-writing system is ideographic. And ideographic writing system consists of word writing and morpheme writing. And ancient Chinese writing system was word-writing, modern Chinese writing is morphemic. It is wrong to think that the shape of a symbol can express meaning or concept without relating to the language in ideographic writing , so the character in Chinese-writing system and the letter in Latin-writing system cannot be compared. The nature of writing system is decided by the corresponding relation between the symbol in writing and the unit in language.