By the end of the Shang dynasty, the Chinese had developed a form of writing in which each character represented a blank

Answer 1

By the end of the Shang dynasty, the Chinese had developed a form of writing in which each character represented a specific word or concept, rather than a single sound or phoneme. This system is known as logographic writing, where each character corresponds to a morpheme—the smallest meaningful unit of language. This writing system laid the foundation for later Chinese script and was primarily used for divination and record-keeping, as seen in oracle bone inscriptions.