Between 1936 and 1940, Herrlee G. Creel and Peter A. Boodberg engaged in what has come to be seen as a celebrated debate over the nature of Chinese writing. Creel characterized this writing as fundamentally “ideographic.” Boodberg, for his part, objected that by definition writing represents speech, and therefore all writing—very much including Chinese writing—must be fundamentally phonetic. Seventy-five years have passed since Boodberg’s second essay was published. Although a number of influential Western scholars—especially those with an interest in linguistics—have pronounced his to be the final word on the topic, the history of Chinese writing is sufficiently rich to stimulate renewed discussion and perhaps also new ideas (or at least restatements of old ideas). In this essay, I suggest that not only can the category of Chinese characters termed semantographs have an ideographic basis, but the same is true as well for a sizable percentage of phonograms.

摘要：從1936年到1940年，顧立雅（Herrlee G. Creel）和卜弼德（Peter A. Boodberg）都發表了文章討論中國文字的性質。顧立雅以為中國文字基本上是表意的。與此不同，卜弼德以為書寫只能代表語言，因此所有的文字基本上是表音的，中國文字也不例外。自從卜弼德第二篇文章發表以後，已經過了75年，這次辯論一直被視為西方漢學最有名的辯論之一。西方語言學家多半都以卜弼德的觀點為定論。然而中國文字的歷史既悠久又複雜，完全值得重新討論。雖然我們不一定能夠提出新的意見，但是至少可以更清晰地分析舊說。本文論證中國文字中的象形字、指事字和會意字都本來起着表意作用，並且不少形聲字也有表意的基礎。

• Edward L. Shaughnessy(The University of Chicago in U.S.A)