A Study Of The Phonetic Elements In Naxi Script

Phonetic elements of Naxi script, which are studied in this dissertation, refer to the Jiajie zi (borrowing logographs which are used seperately to represent a homophonic word) and phonograms which are used in semantic-phonetic compouds. The dissertation analyses the performance and characteristics of the phonetic elements and disscusses the evolution of them. The following is a summary of each chapter.Introduction. This part introduces some background on this topic and reviews the past research on phonetic elements in Naxi script. And the methodologies and framework are also briefly introduced.Chapter One:An Outline of Phonetic Representation in Naxi script. This chapter is a stative overview of the phonetic representation in Naxi script. The main findings are as follows.1. The correspondence between units of writing system and units of naxi language is complicated.2. The correspondence between Jiajie zi and words are not stable.3. The definition of semantic-phonetic compound is not easy, because there are many multi-syllabic writing forms. And the phonograms can be various kinds of graphs.4. The locations of phonograms conform to the principle of balance on the whole, but it subjects to change in scriptures.Chapter Two:An Examination of the Sound of the Phoneitc Elements & Chapter Three:An Examination of Some Peculiar Phenomena of Phonetic Representation. These two chapters both investigate the sound of phonetic elements. Chapter Two makes an analysis the accuracy of phonetic representation, while Chapter Three studies three special cases of phonetic representation in focus. The material of the three special cases are all from scriptures.Chapter Four:A Case Study:the Regional Characteristics of Phonetic Representation in Mingyin Scripture. In this chapter, we firstly found all the Mingyin Scriptures in the Corpora of Naxi Scriptures, and then we made a comparative study between Scriptures written by different Dongbas and between Scriptures written in different regions. In the end we sumarized the regional features of the phonetic elements. The method applied in this chapter is an examplar for the study of regional characteristics of Naxi scriptures.Chapter Five:The Origin and Evolution of Phonetic Elements. In this chapter, we firstly distinguished the self-originating graphs and loan graphs, and then analysed the evolution process via the comparison between different scriptures. Self-orginating graphs are the predominant body of the phonetic elements and the loan graphs falls into 3 categories, Tibetan graphs, Chinese graphs and Geba graphs.Chapter Six:The Development of the Phonetic Representation in Naxi script. In this chapter, we mainly studied the development of the phonetic representation diachronically by the investigation of various types of literatures from different regions. We proposed an assumption of a develpment route of phonetic representaion for a full writing of Naxi language. In the end we discussed the language’s influence on writing sysem. The mono-syllabic lexicon should be the important factor leading to a mature writing, while the muti-syllabic lexicon is the main reason for the different development routes of Naxi script and Chinese script.Conclusion:This part summarizes the innovations of this dissertation.1. It’s a steady step of the comparative study on regional features and the graphic features of the phonetic elements.2. It differentiates the various kinds of loan graphs in Naxi script.3. It reinterpretes some graphs and changes the tradational understanding of them.4. It analyses the development of the phonetic representation in Naxi script and proposes new perspectives of the future of Naxi script.5. All the new findings of this dissertation relies on the extensive examination of scriptures and the appliance of comprehensive comparisons.