Re: Word count of minimum vocabulary


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

John Atkinson wrote:

[snip]
As for Chinese, Ramsay tells us that "the Chinese have no everyday word for 'word' ", which is what the OP seems to be getting at. The common word <zi4> (what the OP writes as "tze") means syllable, or character, or (more or less) morpheme. However according to Norman, modern Chinese linguists do have a technical word for "word", namely <ci>. (I don't know what the tone is.)

My knowledge of Chinese transcriptions is poor. Perhaps
Lee could tell us whether <zi4> is different from <ci>
or not.

It's definitely a completely different word. But, yes, it would be interesting for one of our Chinese posters to tell us more about it. (What does it mean in everyday -- non-linguistic -- contexts?)

John.

.

Quantcast