A new article of mine on the history of the Chinese script has just officially appeared in the Festschrift for South Coblin. Below is the abstract:
Graphic motivation of the character 焉 has long been obscure, though the underlying words have been much discussed as contractions. It is proposed that neither of the underlying words is a true contraction, and the most economical explanation given current evidence is that the graph’s structure is a purely semantic ligature or “portmanteau.”
長期以來，“焉”字的構字原則雖不甚清楚，但近代學者多認為其所包含的兩個語素（yān、yán）為合音。本文主張這兩個語素都不是真正的合音。從現有的證據看來，對“焉”字的構造最經濟的解釋是，它純粹是非會意非合音的合文。
The full text is posted on my academic site.
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