On The Origin And Evolution Of Southwestern Chinese Minorities' Primitive Writings

The primitive writing, which follows the precursors of writing and precedes the evolution of diverse writings, is just a middle stage between pre-writing and mature writing. Through the study of this particular stage, we can have a deeper understanding about the quality of these writings, and thus get a clearer view of the process of writing's origin and development as well as the difference between pre-writing and writing. Therefore, the study bears great value for both historical and general study of writing.The study of the primitive writing is greatly restricted by the meager writing evidence. But fortunately in Southwestern China many peoples live there and created many kinds of writings (some are more advanced while some are on the relatively low level) which offer wonderful materials for the study of writing's origination and evolution.The dissertation comprehensively studies the primitive writings of Southwestern Chinese minorities, and investigates the situation and reason of its emergence and evolution. It offers new evidence and some helpful conclusions to the historical, general and comparative study of writing.The dissertation falls into five chapters:Chapter 1: introduction. We mainly discuss the definition and the nomination of the primitive writing; briefly introduce the Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive writings including Duoxi pictograph of Taliu people (a branch of Yi nationality), Daba writing of Moso people, Shaba writing of Ersu people, Dongba writing of Naxi people's western dialect, Malimasa writing and Ruanke writing (two variants of Dongba writing), and Shui writing of Shui people; review the previous related study including the theoretical study of the primitive writing, the case study as well as the comparative and comprehensive study of the Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive writings; and in the end explain the train of thoughts, methods, and materials of the dissertation.Chapter 2: the origin of the Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive writings. This chapter analyses the Southwestern Chinese minorities' myths related to the origin of writing in folklore's perspective, and distinguishes the scientific elements from the fabricated elements of them; with the precursors of writing, discusses the primitive recording system's development and its preparation for writing's incubation; investigates the emergence of writing in two aspects: the arising of the graph inventory and that of writing rules; studies the formation of graphs through probing into the origination and accumulation of graphs; and in the end analyzes the causation of the origin of primitive writings.Chapter 3: the evolution of Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive writings. This chapter studies the development of writing through investigating the extending and optimizing of graph inventory and the perfection of writing rules. And then it discusses the evolution of the graphs through investigating the changes of graphs' formation mechanism. There is one separate section which discusses the development of separation degree of graphs and the normalization of graphs. This chapter also studies the emergence of graph variants and in the end studies the causation of writing's evolution. Chapter 4: the change of Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive writings. This chapter discusses the endangered situation and disappearance of the primitive writings and its history, present condition, causation and Countermeasures. And then it investigates the maturing, the contact and the diffusion of the Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive writings. It also discusses the arising of new writing promoted by primitive writings, and in the end the bound changes of primitive writings.Chapter 5: the concluding remarks. This chapter firstly sums up the conclusions, and then summarizes the discussions, namely the complement to and refution of the arguments before this study. There are also some remaining arguments and a summary of the new terms put forward or adopted in the dissertation.The originality of the dissertation lies in:1. the comprehensive study of the origin and evolution of Southwestern Chinese minorities' writing systems for the first time.2. the trial adoption of the method differentiating the writing system with graphs in the research.3. the study of the evolution of the Southwestern Chinese Minorities' primitive writings in the aspects of its maturing, producing variants, promoting new writing's arising and it's dying.4. the study of the writing phenomenon which occurred in the contact and diffusion of the Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive writings, arriving at the four types of the relations of the writing: writing penetration, writing syllepsis, writing transformation and amalgamated writing.5. the discussion of the impetus of writing's emergence and evolution, and advancing that the impetus of the writing's emergence can be divided into nucleus impetus and surface impetus, and that the impetus of the writing's development comprises three levels.6. the study of the phases in the development of the Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive recording system, and the reasoning of the opinion that the development of the primitive recording system paved the way for the emergence of writing.7. basing on the study of the myths of the genesis of the Southwestern Chinese minorities' writing, the dissertation discusses in detail the scientific elements and the fabricated elements in the myths.8. putting forward many new terms, e.g. original graphs and new graphs, imitating mechanism and transformation mechanism, quasi-graphs, adhesion of sound and meaning, separation degree of graphs, the endangered situation of writing, the dying of the writing, the amalgamated writing, and solving (or preliminarily solving) with these terms a series of related problems about the Southwestern Chinese minorities' primitive writing and even the general study of writing.