说“象形”字

纵观人类文字的起源，大多发端于象形。其他的古老文字如苏美尔楔彤文字、古埃及圣书字、中美洲的玛雅文字等。或消亡或改为表音文字，唯独汉字继续在象形的基础上通过不断地完善，终于成为一个完整的体系。汉字的象形字虽然只有360多个，也有其自身的局限性，但它在汉字的演变和发展中起着稳定的作用，是功不可没的。在象形字的探究中，关键注意的是象形字的分类以及与指事、会意、形声字之间的关系。

On "Pictograph"

Although most of the origins of writings in the history of mankind are pictographs,such as Sumerian cuneiform,Egyp-tian hieroglyphics,Maya glyphs and Chinese characters,most of them have either been extinct or changed to phonographic systems.Only Chinese characters finally develop into a complete system on the basis of pictograph through continuous refinement.Though there are only 364 pictographs,they play a stable and important role in the evolvement and development of Chinese characters.This paper has a discussion of it from the perspective of the pictograph categories and the relations between self-explanatory,associative compound,and pictophonetic characters.