Component analysis vocabulary (was: Re: Question: Radicals of 共　in edict)

Curt Fischer <tentrillion@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> So, in Japanese, we have 部首, which are radicals in the narrow
> sense, right? As in, each kanji has one and only one of them. Is
> there a Japanese equivalent for the the broader idea of kanji
> "components" in general?

To make my 漢字 flash cards, I wrote a categorisation of each card so
that it would be possible later to sort them by that criterion,
exclude certain classifications for particular study, etc.

I ended up using these categories, and assigning each card with the
first category that matched:

常用1 .. 常用6 primary school (graded by year level)
常用 junior-high (ungraded)
人名 permitted for names
非常用 commonly used
参考 uncommon, reference
部首 radical
部分 component

All but the last term came from Halpern's categorisation in NJECD and
KLD. (I didn't know enough Japanese to correctly translate
"non-Jouyou" and "reference", so they may well be wrong.) Halpern
doesn't give a solid definition of the difference between "non-Jouyou"
and "reference", but I've retained the existing distinctions for each
character.

Characters that aren't in Halpern's work I've categorised as
"non-Jouyou" if they have a "Frequency" rating in KANJIDIC, and
"reference" otherwise. (Jim, what is the basis of that attribute on a
character?)

The "radical" characters all appear in Halpern's work, and are just
the complete set of classical radicals.

The only cards with the "component" category are ones I could not even
find in KANJIDIC, and thus AFAICT don't appear as characters in that
form at all. E.g. the right part of 浅 and 銭 doesn't appear as a
separate character, and isn't a radical. It can only be what we're
talking about as "component", but other works variously label
"primitive", "grapheme", "element" et cetera.

My limited understanding is that the Japanese themselves don't care to
classify the parts of 漢字 beyond 部首 and "residual stroke count"
(for which I've forgotten the 日本語 term). Into the latter goes any
part of the character that isn't the radical -- regardless of whether
it contains other kanji, other radicals, or just "other".

Can anyone else enlighten us here? Is component analysis of 漢字
mature enough in Japan that there is a common vocabulary we should
know?

Suggested improvements to my categories are also welcome.

--
\ "Somebody told me how frightening it was how much topsoil we |
`\ are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire |
_o__) and nobody got scared." -- Jack Handey |
Ben Finney <http://www.benfinney.id.au/>
.

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