关于鲍则岳(William G. Boltz)对汉字的起源与早期发 展的研究的述评

William G. Boltz has made a comparative analysis on the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, the Sumerian cuneiform script and the Chinese writing. Under the principle of “every Chinese character must have a phonetic component”, Boltz prefers characterizing-Chinese characters as “logograph” or “lexigraph” to “ideograph”. In Boltz’s opinion, a Chinese character is self-initiated script, rather than other-initiated. In the early development of the Chinese writing system, it is a sudden and instantaneous process when the “forerunners of writing” turns out to be “writing”. The Chinese writing system has three progression stages: the zodiographic stage, the graphic multivalence and the S/P determinatives stages. The Chinese script does not evolve into an alphabet, not only because of the Chinese language itself, but also Chinese people’s ideology. Besides, Boltz also has discussed some legends of the origin of the Chinese characters, the Liu shu and the Shuo wen chich tzu, and orthographic standardization.