Re: Has it been tried to represent tones with punctuation ...

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
Thanks for the explanation. Allow me to ask yet another related
question. The pair of characters in Chinese have each, in the majority
of cases, individually a meaning (that can be looked up in dictionary)
and sensibly combine to form the meaning of the pair. On the other
hand, it seems to me that in languages like English the composition
of meaning of a word from those of its morphemes is, in comparison,
less frequently practically possible. For example, for kitchen the
2 Chinese charaters tell of a room for cooking, but I am at a lost
to get the meaning of the word kitchen from its components. Am I
wrong because of my ignorance of the English etymology or the said
phenomenon is someting particular of Chinese?
I have no reason to suspect that "kitchen" is not monomorphemic. Maybe
someone who bothers to look up the etymology will discover
differently.
A point that I didn't make explicit is that, if there are too many
monomorphic words in English, then the comparison I indicated
would still have some sense.

What does "too many monomorphemic words" mean?

If there are too many monomorphemic words, then that means there
are less number of morphemes that enter into combinations, as compared
to Chinese where there are lots of two character combinations where
each character corresponds to a morpheme. Put it another way, in
Chinese, knowing the meaning of the characters in the combination
facilitates in most cases the derivation or remembering of the
meaning of the combination, while the meaning of a character that
does not enter into such combinations (which exist but comparatively
rare in Chinese) has to be learned individually for itself.

There are several words in English that could be paraphrased as "room
for cooking," including "galley." The meaning of even a Chinese word
is not predictable from, only indicated by, the meanings of its
components.
The 2 characters meaning kitchen in Chinese is actually such that the
first would mean kitchen in old (and even in modern) style and the
second character adds the meaning of room, thus somehow adds some
redundancy. For beautiful the two characters actually both mean
beautiful. I couldn't agree thus with your unpredictability claim.
(Of course, each rule has exceptions and in the present case there
are also exceptions but these are in the minority.)

Have you analyzed the Chinese vocabulary to come up with that
incredible statement, or are you just guessing?

A simple test: Take every 10th page of your favorite Chinese-English
dictionary. For the first ten two-character words listed on each of
those pages, show that the meaning is completely determined by the
meanings of its component morphemes.

You will be able to do that for a tiny handful of the words you
encounter.

I have done that for two pages (10th and 20th, thus not specially
chosen) of a dictionary, see below, which seems not to correspond
to your claim above.

M. K. Shen
--------------------------------------------------------------------

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary. The Commercial Press,
1982, Beijing.

Note that no special symbols are retained in the transcription,
with the result that some characters appear to be identical
while they are in fact different. Brackets indicate the meaning of
the associated character in the two or more character combination.
Meaning of a combination is given after semicolon.


Page 10

(ba) : hold
(ba) (bing)[handle] : handle
(ba) (chi)[hold] : control; retain one's grip on
(ba) (guan)[pass] : guard the pass
(ba) (shi)[power;force] : martial arts
(ba) (shou)[guard;defend] : guard; defend
(ba) (shou)[hand] : hand; hand-grip
(ba) (tou)[head] : hirer of contract labour
(ba) (wo)[grasp; hold] : grap; seize
(ba) (xi)[play] : juggling

-----------------------------------------------------

(ba) : target
(ba) (zi)[son; something small and hard] : target

-----------------------------------------------------

(ba) : dam



Page 20

(bao) : defend; protect
(bao) (show)[guard;defend] : guard; keep
(bao) (song)[send] : send on recommendation
(bao) (wei)[defend] : defend; safeguard
(bao) (xian)[dangerrous] : safe; secure guarantee
(bao) (xian)[dangerous] (si)[silk;thread like thing] : fuse
(bao) (xian)[dangerous] (xiang)[box] : safe
(bao) (yang)[keep in good repair] : keep in good repair
(bao) (yu)[cultivate] (yuan)[member of an organization} :
nursery school teacher
(bao) (zhang)[barrier] : safeguard
(bao) (zheng)[evidence;proof] : guaranatee
(bao) (zhi)[quality] (bao) (liang)[measure] : guarantee both
quality and quantity
(bao) (zhong)[serious;important] : (hope a person will) look
after (himslef)

------------------------------------------------------

(bao) : fortress

-------------------------------------------------------

(bao) : report; announce; declare; respond

(bao) (chou)[enmity;animosity] : revenge
(bao) (chou)[enmity;animosity] (xue)[wipe out] (hen)[hate] :
avenge oneself and cancel out one's hatred
(bao) (chou)[reward] : reward
(bao) (da)[reply] : repay
(bao) (dao)[arrive] : report (for duty)
(bao) (dao)[speak] : report
(bao) (fei)[useless] : report (to the person in charge) that
something is no longer usable
(bao) (fu)[turn around; turn back] : retaliate
(bao) (gao)[tell] : report
(bao) (gao)[tell] (wen xue)[literature] : reportage
(bao) (hua)[speech] (ji)[machine] : radiotelephone
(bao) (kan)[periodical] : newspapers and periodicals
(bao) (ming)[name] : enter one's name (for something)
(bao) (mu)[(theatre)curtain] : announce items to be performed

.

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