摘要
18世纪 ,威廉·瓦尔博顿在《摩西的神圣使命》中提出了人类文字“图画而文字”的理论。它就是风行于 2 0世纪的“图画文字说”的原始版。从普通语言学原理出发 ,不难看出 ,单纯的“图画”由于无法满足“文字”的基本成立条件 ,所以永远不可能“变”成“文字”。并且 ,迄今为止所有的材料也都不支持“图画而文字”的理论。因而 ,瓦尔博顿提出的“图画而文字”的假说 。
In the eighteenth century, William Warburton, future bishop of Gloucester, introduced the first evolutionary theory of writing. He argued that all scripts originally developed from narrative drawings that in time became more and more simplified and developed into abstract characters. The theory was presented in Warburton's book Divine Legation of Moses, published in London in 1738. Warburton based his theory on the three scripts: ″Mexican paintings″ (Aztec codices), Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Chinese characters, which he viewed as representing three stages in the evolution of writing. According to him, the Mexican paintings illustrated the first stage. The second stage, exemplified by the Egyptian script hieroglyphs, conveyed more abstract ideas by analogy or metaphor. And the Chinese ″refined hieroglyphs″ marked the third stage. Thus, the original edition of Pictographic Theory ″Writing originated from picture″ came in to being.According to the principle of general philology, the theory ″Writing originates from pictures″ is wrong, It mixed up the fundamental conception of picture and writing. Picture is an art, and writing is a system of sign. They belong to different categories, with three differences as follows:1. The difference in the requirement for their establishment;2. The difference in their relations with words; and 3. The difference in their function.If it cannot establish a regular relation with a word in one language, therefore, any picture would never change into a part of the writing system . To date, no material evidence of the origin of writing - whether it is the Sumerian system, the Egyptian system, the Chinese system, or the Dungba system - has ever supported the said theory. The conclusion is thus reached that the viewpoint ″writings all over the world originated from pictures″ is wrong.
出处
《浙江大学学报（人文社会科学版）》
CSSCI
北大核心
2004年第5期142-148,共7页
Journal of Zhejiang University:Humanities and Social Sciences
基金
浙江省哲学社会科学规划课题 (NO2YY5 )
关键词
普通文字学
图画文字说
原始版
剖析
验证
general philology
Pictographic Theory
original edition
analyse
test and verify
