Re: Word count of minimum vocabulary



Richard Herring wrote:

Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Richard Herring wrote:

Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes


I am surprised to see that my use of the term "Chinese
ideographs" has generated a lot of follow-up stuffs and
even a harsh critique on a well-known dictionary. Let
me point out that, no matter what opinions one may have,
from standpoint of linguistic theory or what not, about
that term, that term is simply currently in "common use"
and that fact alone, I believe, legitimates my use of it
in previous posts of this thread.

So it's a _common_ error.
Let's see.
You make a posting in a technical forum. People whose knowledge of the subject is considerably greater than yours (and I'm not referring myself here) point out that you've made a common error. You have a choice: (a) gracefully accept the correction and continue with the substantive discussion, or (b) post a series of irrelevant arguments attempting to justify an untenable position.
What kind of person chooses (b)?
One might guess from your name that you know written Chinese. If so, surely you must be aware of how the characters that you write are composed. If not, why are you arguing with people who do?


I don't understand the "implication" of your term "technical
forum" above in the present context. Do you imply

(1) Since this is a forum on a special scientific topic,
one should use, where possible, special scientific
vocabularies pertinent to the objects being discussed,
i.e. substituting (avoiding) the vocabulary used by
common people in everyday life. There exist (readily
available) special dictionaries covering the objects
I wanted to talk about in previous posts.

or

(2) The particular English dictionary I cited is not good
enough in quality, hence it gives a wrong/misleading
explanation for the term I employed,

or

(3) "ideograph" is not a "technically acceptable" term for
use to refer to the "Chinese characters", especicially
for use in a technical/scientific paper or the like?

I'll wait for your comments to the above before attempting
to further argue with you. Thanks.

None of the above. (why the "or"s? do they have to be alternatives?)

What I _imply_ by "technical forum" is that there are people in it who know far more about this subject than you do.

I'd agree with (2) and (3).

As for (1), "don't misuse technical terms" would be a more accurate statement of my position than anything you wrote above. And you're more likely to find these terms adequately defined in textbooks than any kind of dictionary.

It's true that there were claims of my having committed
an error. However, there were no concrete explanations
in my view. Hence I attempted to find out possible
directions of more detailed arguments of my discussion
partners. Thus I came upon the three items of the last
post. I agree with your amendment of (1) which means
that it could actually be subsumed by (3) for the
present purpose. Therefore I'll attempt to counter
(2) and (3) in the following.

Concerning (2), I suppose one may well consider The
Oxford English Dictionary (the biggest English
dictionary I ever know, having 20 volumes) to be a
sufficiently good Dictionary. On p.621 of its vol.VII
(2nd ed.) I found:

ideograph: A character or figure symbolizing the
idea or thing, without expressing the name of it,
as the Chinese characters and most Egyptian
hieroglyphics.

Concerning (3), I like to quote from two books, both
in the field of linguistics, which I was able to find
in our library:

In H. Bussmann, Routledge Dictionary of Language and
Linguistics (London and New York, 1996, ISBN 0-415-02225-8)
I found on p.73 (note the phrase "ideographic writing"):

Chinese

Largest Sino-Tibetan language, which is actually
a group of at least six languages: Mandarin (....
.... with 613 million speakers the most widely
spoken language in the world), Wu .......... The
beginnings of the ideographic writing system date
back 4,000 years; today it is the oldest writing
system in use.

In W. Abraham, Terminologie zur neueren Linguistik
(Tuebingen, 1988, ISBN 3-484-10605-0) I found on p.284
(note "chinesisches Schreibsystem"):

Ideogramm, ideographisch

Begriffschrift, Darstellung der Woerter durch
Begriffszeichen: z.B. die aegyptischen Hieroglyphen
oder die chinesischen und japanischen Schreibsysteme.
Gegensatz: Buchstaben-, Silbenschrift.

Could I now say that my use of the term "Chinese ideographs"
is "technically" acceptable?

Thanks.

M. K. Shen


.

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