Re: The origins of writing

From: Dylan Sung (dylanwhs.tsktsktsk_at_pacific.net.hk)
Date: 06/19/04 

Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 21:02:40 +0100

"alexB" <alexb7623@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:10d71ehem585uda@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:40D33123.4261@worldnet.att.net...
> > AlexB wrote:
> The idiographic writing by
> >
> > true
> >
> > > Chinese has nothing to do with that. It is not phonetic. Like
Egyptians
> they
> >
> > false
>
> "One major difference between Chinese concepts of language and Western
> concepts is that Chinese makes a sharp distinction between written
language
> (wen) and spoken language (yu). This distinction extends to the
distinction
> between written word (zi) and spoken word (hua). The concept of a distinct
> and unified combination of both written and spoken forms of language is
much
> less strong in Chinese than in the West. There are a variety of spoken
> Chinese, the most prominent of which is Mandarin. There is however only
one
> uniform written script. (See section below.)
>
> "The Chinese written language employs the Han characters (?? pinyin
hànzì),
> which are named after the Han culture to which they are largely
attributed.
> Chinese characters appear to have originated in the Shang dynasty as
> pictograms depicting concrete objects. The first examples we have of
Chinese
> characters are inscriptions on oracle bones, which are occasionally sheep
> scapula but mostly turtle plastrons (lower shells) used for divination
> purposes. Over the course of the Zhou and Han dynasties, the characters
> became more and more stylized. Also, additional components were added so
> that many characters contain one element that gives (or at least once
gave)
> a fairly good indication of the pronunciation, and another component (the
> so-called "radical") gives an indication of the general category of
meaning
> to which the character belongs. In the modern Chinese languages, the
> majority of characters are phonetically based rather than logographically
> based. An example would be the character for the word ? àn that means "to
> press down." It contains ? an (peace), which serves as its phonetic
> component, and ? shou (hand), that indicates that the action is frequently
> one that is done using one's hand.

I can tell you as someone who has learned to read Chinese with the help of
dictionaries, that when one encounters new characters, the first thing one
tries for a guestimate of the pronunciation is from anything which could be
a phonetic element. The phonetic does not indicate any precise reading, but
one can guess from it possible pronunciations, based on what one already
knows from other characters sharing a similar compound element in the glyph.
(Traditional characters are perhaps easier in this respect, since some
simplified characters have such radical differences, it must be learned by
rote.)

As an example, the character for piao4 (banknote, ticket, bill) occurs in
many characters, ignoring the tone for a while, this character element forms
the phonetic for characters with this element in both piao and biao reading
characters.

The two stroke character ding1 looking like T with a left pointing hook at
the bottom is found in characters who have it as the phonetic, for example,
nail (gold rad jin + ding), to fix one's eyes upon (eye rad mu + ding),
peak/top of a summit (ding + ye leaf rad). None of these glosses are
related, but they all have a common phonetic.

Also bo1 (wave) is found in old woman (po2), the first syllable of pineapple
bo-luo or spinach bo-cai.

More often than not, the phonetic indicates the rime of the character rather
initial+rime+tone.

For instance the phonetic formed of knife over mouth zhao4 indicates an
/-au/ rime as found in chao, shao, zhao etc.

> "Chinese characters are understood as morphemes that are *independent* of
> phonetic change. Thus, although the number one is "yi" in Mandarin, "yat"
in
> Cantonese and "tsit" in Hokkien, they derive from a common ancient Chinese
> word and still share an identical character: ?. Nevertheless, the

If this is reason you thought that characters in Chinese have no phonetic
indication, then you've misunderstood it. It means characters can be read in
different ways in different languages of Chinese. What you may also find
strange is that within different dialects, the characters also have some
form of consistency in reading of the characters from the same rime group
that share the same phonetic element. For instance, in Mandarin the
character upright "zheng" forms the phonetic in many characters. In
Cantonese, it is pronounced jing (tSiN) and in the same characters within
Cantonese, they are likewise pronounced jing, if we ignore the tone. In
Hakka these characters are prounced /tsin/.

> The point I am trying to make is that the number of ideographic elements
> (characters) vastly exceeds the number of sounds in any Chinese dialect.
> Notwithstanding the quotes above I do not believe the Chinese has a
phonetic
> system of writing. It seems to me that the abovementioned phonetic
elements
> are simply pictures of many basic words whose pronounciation is considered
> well know and they may serve as a reference or a cue as to how to say this
> and that. It is logical since the need for compound characters has been
> rising over the years anyway.
>

That may be the case increasingly because Mandarin is the major influence in
vocabulary change in Chinese, as it dominates China and Chinese culture. The
loss of endings (-m, -p, -t, -k) in Mandarin has meant that strategies to
cope with homophones must evolve, but southern Chinese languages like Hakka,
Yue Cantonese, Min Xiamen, Wu Suzhou still retain some of these have meant
that they have developed few compound words than Mandarin. In recent time
with the national language making a significant contribution to everyday
life, the standard putonghua phrases are beginning to creep into Cantonese
and Hakka and possibly in other of these dialects. For example, a common
Hakka word for butterfly was once /jON11 jap5/, but it is being replaced by
/fu2 t'iap5/ from hudie in the Mandarin. In Cantonese the old word was /paN
Sa/, but now folks say /wu tip/ (hudie) instead.

Multisyllable morphemes have existed since the beginning of Chinese writing.
For instance the sexagenary cycle is based on two series, one of ten, the
other of twelve items. Together each of the sixty elements are composed of
bisyllabic units, which together indicate the position in that cycle.
Moreover, if you look at the inscriptions on oracle bones, names of kings
are given bi or multisyllabic posthumous names. For instance the warrior
queen Fuhao (in modern Chinese) and some supreme spirit ShangDi. Even the
groups of people who surround the Shang have names which are two or more
syllable, e.g. Zhao-fang.

Today the majority of Chinese characters have a phonetic element.

Dyl.