“天雨粟,鬼夜哭”——自源文字滥觞考

On the Genesis of Writing Characters in History

长期以来,文字起源一直是学术界争议不休的话题。从文字发生学和语源学的角度看,语言符号在最初阶段是在心理音响模仿以及形象临摹的基础之上发展起来的,由此可以推断文字起源经历了从"前文字"时期的"表形文字"到"表意文字"的演变过程。与中国的筹策而文字一样,陶筹而文字不过是"前文字"时期的一个典型产物,而表意字和假借的出现才是自源文字雏形产生的开始。

For ages,the origin of writing characters has been a controversial topic in the academia.From the viewpoint of phylogeny and etymology,language symbols at the initial stage were developed on the basis of psychological sound imitation and image interpretation,from which it can be inferred that writing characters has experienced the evolution from pictography to ideograph during the period of the Earliest Precursor of Writing.Like logograms from ancient Chinese chips,logogram from tokens is the typical product of the period,while ideogram and loanword is truly the formation of writing that formally marks the rudiment of the process.