Re: Word count of minimum vocabulary

"António" == António Marques <m.ap@xxxxxxx> writes:

António> Lee Sau Dan wrote: '1', '2', '3', '+', are ideographs.
>> >> No, they map to words. :)
>>
António> Call me nuts, but I seldom map them to any words when
António> doing math.
>> Nor do I have to map a Japanese Kanji to a word when I read
>> and understand it.

António> You do, you map it to your HK word.

You can read my mind?


There are many Kanji's which aren't used in Chinese. And I don't know
how to pronounce those words at all -- neither in Cantonese nor
Mandarin. Yet, I can learn what they mean and memorize the
association between that shape and its meaning. There is no need to
tie it up with any words -- whether Chinese words or Japanese ones.



António> If an ideograph is used inside some text to represent a
António> word, it's being used as a logograph.
>> Since '1', '2', '3', '+' ARE used in some text to represent
>> words, they are logographs? And that makes them ineligible for
>> being ideographs?

António> Since I was precisely referring to them, what do I need
António> to add to 'ideograph (...) being used as a logograph'?

A logograph can be used ideographically, and an ideograph can be used
logographically. How can you then draw a clear-cut line between the
two? Why would you insist that every Chinese character MUST not be
ideographs?


>> So, please don't rule out that possibility. When some people
>> say "Chinese characters are ideograms", they may be refering to
>> that kind of ideographic usage.

António> They might, but they're not.

Please analyze it into 2 levels: 1) the characters themselves, not in
any sentence (e.g. for labels on a map); 2) a writing system employing
the characters, such as Chinese and Japanese. I'd say that on level
(1), they're used ideographically. For (2), the characters are used
to map to words, and hence are logographs.

(1) isn't rare. In Chinese maps, we often create "symbols" out of
characters -- they're precise and concise. A Japanese can read those
symbols too, because they know those characters, just like how we
*learnt* the symbols for various Olympic games.



António> In this case, the student is taking advantage of
António> homography to mask ignorance.
>> True. But is that character here an ideogram?

António> No. The student doesn't mean the idea of 'sun', but a
António> specific (even if unknown) japanese word.

But that word refers to the sun (e.g. "sunshine"), and he may be
thinking of the sun when writing it. It seems that you can read his
mind?


António> Very good, but the written text will have well-defined
António> set of readings (usually only one, but sometimes more due
António> to no language being phonetically injective). Compare
António> that to <1 + 2 = 3>, which have no reading in particular.
>> It does. "1" is "one", right?

António> 'One' is the particular reading of <1>? Why, pray tell?

And similarly, <nichi> is not the particular reading of the character
for "sun".



>> If "1" has no reading in particular, neither does the character
>> for "sun". Because it is different in Japanese and in Chinese.

António> Yes it does. It has a defined number of readings in each
António> language it's used in,

You can use the character in English and pronounce it as "sun". The
symbol "1" didn't exist in English texts until quite recently, did it?
And when you adopted it, you pronounced it as "1". Imagine that you
now adopt the character for "sun" to write the English word "sun".
Then, how is that different from "1"? (And how about the Thai
numerals? They're not as good as the European (often misnamed
"Arabic") numerals?) The widespreadness affects the status of being
ideographic or logographic?


António> and only a subset of those are possible given a
António> context. If a decision on the reading to use can't be
António> reached, it's either because the candidates are all valid
António> or the writing system has a deficiency.



--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
.

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