Talk:Chinese character classification

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I have been studying character classifications, and I book I am reading (现代汉语. 上海教育出版社, 2004) mentions that in modern times new methods have been used to create characters. Might these deserve mention?

Examples: 巯(qiu2): both visually and phonetically a union of 氢(qing) and 硫(liu). 乒, 乓, 冇 were all created by removing strokes from existing characters. New simplified characters often use 又 and 乂, which represent neither sound nor meaning. Some simplified characters came into existence by adoption of grass style characters: 书, 农, 为, 长. --Sinosplice 15:51, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I think the place to discuss novelties in character simplification is at the article on simplification. But otherwise, the article does mention the creation of new characters: "Simplified characters are generally well attested as having been used since ancient times as shorthands and as variants of traditional forms, although a few have been simply invented in modern times". I think 又 and 乂 were both present in informal shothands before simplification, and the PRC simply made them more productve as radicals. 巯, though, looks like a typical 會意 character. 乒乓 can be viewed as a sort of strange case of 轉注.
There is a notice that this isn't really the modern way of looking at characters: "Although this categorisation is no longer the focal point of modern lexicographic practice, it is fairly simple to understand and remains useful". But, it might be appropriate to point to the simplification article as a source of more info on modern Chinese character invention processes.
I'm not an expert on Chinese lexicography - this article is primarily a translation from French - but I think that an article on modern Chinese character creation is worth writing. But, this article is intended to talk about the traditional classification of the 說文解字 a part of the background of Chinese. More articles on present-day thinking are certainly welcome.
--Diderot 17:54, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I’m editing the Chinese character, Chinese character classification, Oracle bone and Kanji pages for consistency of the terms used in the 六書 liu4shu1 classification of char’s, as well as to point out the problematic nature of Xŭ Shèn’s classification. I’ve fixed errors such as misconstruing oracle bone graphs as “generally pictograms”; and will deal with problematic nature of terms such as ideograph, radical, etc.. Work in progress this week (not quite done yet).Dragonbones 02:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Debunking folk etymology

Many of the structural and etymological analyses of characters on the Wiki chinese pages are deeply flawed, based on spurious folk etymology including those copying errors from Shuowen. I'm beginning to correct them, as here:

"In many cases, the average person thus no longer understands that a particular component in fact has a phonetic role (rather than the semantic role imaginatively ascribed to it by folk etymology). In other cases, one component is actually the original character or etymon, and the other may be a redundant phonetic or semantic element. The above example of 菜 cài ("vegetable") is just such a case. 采 cǎi ("harvest") was also used in classical texts to write "vegetable". In other words, the graph 采 underwent semantic extension, to also mean or represent "vegetable"; the addition of the 艹 cǎo "grass" is in fact redundant. Thus, although the graph 菜 is usually understood in folk etymology (as it was by Xu Shen in Shuowen Jiezi) as 艹 cǎo "grass" semantic plus 采 cǎi ("harvest") phonetic, it can also be analyzed as 采 cǎi ("harvest", semantically extended to "vegetable") which is etymonic, playing both semantic and phonetic roles, plus 艹 cǎo "grass" as a redundant semantic."

The source for this particular one is Woon, p.112-113. I'm adding references (Woon, Qiu, DeFrancis, etc.) on the main page and will refer to them here by page number only.Dragonbones 04:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the 東 example from the compound indicatives because the oracle bone and bronze examples now available to us clearly show Xu Shen's 'sun plus tree' reading to be an erroneous structural decomposition. Rather, it was clearly a monosematic pictograph (so listing it as a compound of any sort is out of the question; furthermore it appears to have been a bag tied at two ends (like a cellophane-wrapped candy with the ends twisted), and after it was borrowed for the homophonous 'east', the original meaning of bag was then written with the now-obsolete 橐 which is now pronounced tuo2. References: 徐中舒 Xu Zhongshu, 丁山說文闕義箋 (commentary on the errors in Shuowen by Ding Shan), cited in BOTH Wú, Teresa L. (1990). The Origin and Dissemination of Chinese Characters (中國文字只起源與繁衍). Caves Books, Taipei ISBN 957-606-002-8, p.251 AND 李孝定 Lĭ Xiàodìng (Lee Hsiao-ting, 1965). 甲骨文字集釋 jiǎgǔwénzì jíshì, (collected interpretations of oracle bone characters), 台北 Táibĕi, 南港 Nángǎng (Nankang): 中央研究院歷史語言研究所 Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, volume 6, page 2029. FYI Li Xiaoding is pretty authoritative. A lot of huiyi are actually folk etymology errors, due to failure to recognize one of the components as the phonetic half of a sem-phon compound, like the bottom half of 家, which is actually a male pig, pronounced 'jia1'. If we need more compound indicative examples, let's please be strict about not including ones that have already been debunked by scholars. Here are a couple better ones: 彭 peng2, which comprises 壴 zhu4 'drum' and three strokes indicating the sound emanating; and 牧 mu4, to put to pasture (cattle plus hand with stick). Dragonbones (talk) 13:37, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] problem with the term "radical"

It seems that previous editors have thoroughly confused four ideas: 1. the radix (radical) or morphemic root of a character 2. the 部首 bu4shou3 'section head' 3. additional semantic elements added later to a graph, e.g., for disambiguation 4. component elements of graphs in general

For example, a previous editor wrote "認 rèn "to know (someone)" contains three radicals: 言 yán "speech" 刀 dāo "knife" (Notice the stroke across the knife, indicating that 刃 rèn "blade" is the intended character bearing the pronunciation information.) 心 xīn "heart". But clearly what was intended was neither the original radix (root) of the compound (correctly called radical but also acceptably called "semantic component", or even better "etymon" if it once stood alone in this meaning), nor the 部首 bu4shou3 'section head' under which the graph is listed in the dictionary. Rather, the writer should have simply written "component elements". 刃 ren4 'blade of a knife' is obviously merely the phonetic, and the author indicated this, yet still called it a radical.

For editors wishing to write on this topic, I strongly suggest thoroughly reading Qiu Xigui, Woon Wee lee and so forth; see also the "Radicals" page as well as my discussion there. Dragonbones 02:01, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major rewrite

The original article was full of errors almost too numerous to mention; I'll try to list reasons and sources for some of the changes here shortly. If you have any objections to or questions about any particular changes, please, please raise them here first before reverting, and I will be very happy to provide arguments and evidence supporting my changes. Thanks! Dragonbones 03:05, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Changes and reasons are listed here. I've signed each separately so discussion of any point can then take place beneath that particular point. 1. For (指示; zhǐshì), replaced ideograms with “indicatives”; the problems with the terms ‘ideograph’ and ‘ideogram’ have been adequately addressed by DeFrancis, and building upon that, by Unger; Similarly, Victor H. Mair, in the foreword to Unger’s book, is also critical of the notion of ideographs, concluding “in reality, there is no such thing as an ideogram” (p. xi). (Unger, J. Marshall (2004). Ideogram – Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.) Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

2. Replaced “This classification system dates back to Xǔ Shěn's second century dictionary, the Shuōwén jiězì. Source for earlier date is Qiu, p.151. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

3. Added “some modern scholars view them as "six principles of character formation" rather than six types of characters, the 六書 liùshū may thus be translated as the "Six-Principles Theory of Character Formation".” For support, see Qiu p.151. In fact this translation is supported by the Hànshū (漢書) Yìwénzhì (藝文志) chapter which calls the 六書 liùshū the “bases for creating characters” (i.e., principles) rather than character types. Qiu also discusses extensively the point that the liu4shu1 is not useful or relevant. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

4. For details on the variations in 六書 liùshū between the Yìwénzhì, Zheng Zhong and Xŭ Shèn lists, see Qiu p.153. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

5. Changed “A few, indicated below with their earliest forms, date back to the 16th century BCE and are found on stone tablets and in bone and shell engravings used in scapulomancy.” to “A few, indicated below with their earliest forms, date back to the 14th to 11th centuries BCE and are found on the oracle bones, generally ox scapulae and turtle plastrons used in pyromancy.” First, there are no stone inscriptions extant before the Stone Drums; second, virtually all Shāng graphs are from the 14th-11th cent. BC period. Third, the shells aren’t scapulas so the term scapulimancy doesn’t apply. Pyromancy and osteomancy are terms covering both. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

6. Cut “女 nǚ is a stylised drawing of a woman kneeing in deference. The oldest pictograms draw her from the front, but the profile view was ultimately adopted in seal script.”, replacing it with “女 nǚ is a stylised drawing of a woman kneeing in profile. In the oracle bone, bronze and seal scripts, the torso vertically bisects the crossed arms; in the clerical and standard scripts, the graph is rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise so that the hands, not the feet, are pointed downward.” The oracle bone of 女 is clearly in profile, so I can’t imagine where the OP got this information that the change to profile occurred with the seal script. We also don’t know that deference was involved, so this speculation is best cut. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

7. cut “- Note that modern characters can only use a fixed number of possible stroke forms. Curved lines are not allowed in regular Chinese writing. There are only 24 (or by some counts, 21) fundamental strokes used today.”, as it is not relevant to the section being discussed; furthermore, there are certainly curved lines; just look at the first and second strokes in 女. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

8. Cut “This practice appeared relatively late in the development of Chinese writing.” (reference is to picto-phonetic compounds). Quite the opposite; they appear in the first significant body of Chinese writing. Indeed, they were probably necessary for the establishment of a fully functional writing system. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

9. Cut “The phonetic element of a compound character is often chosen to some extent with the meaning in mind.” In such cases, the supposed ‘phonetic’ is usually in fact etymonic (the original graph), and not a later “choice”. The etymon in such cases, after a semantic is added, plays both semantic and phonetic roles. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

10. Cut “For example, 認 rèn "to know (someone)" contains three radicals:”. Clearly the original writer doesn’t understand what a radical is (or should be) -- see extended discussion of the problematic misusage of the term 'radical' on that page. He/she goes on to incorrectly list dāo ‘knife’ as one of them; dāo per se is not even present in this graph; rather, ren4 is present. Finally to suggest that the extra stroke added to dāo to produce rèn is somehow indicative of which component is phonetic is simply ludicrous. I can't think of any parallel examples in which a mark was added to indicate which component was phonetic. Dragonbones 09:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

'"in truth, as with all written languages, they can only convey meaning through association with the spoken word."'
Taken at face value, this statement is somewhere between highly questionable and utterly false. The spoken form of ancient Egyptian is lost to us, and yet we are able to assign meanings to texts written in it. I get the point - Chinese characters are usually used to write something like modern spoken Chinese - but the broader asssertion is not a truism about language. --Diderot 10:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] problem with pictures -- help needed!

In the Compound indicatives (會意) section, the graphs in the pictures have their tops cut off. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks in advance! Dragonbones 08:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Traditional vs Simplified rain character

Apparently the traditional and simplified rain charcters are not the same. In this message: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/2005-03/msg00038.html it is mentioned that the dots don't all face down in the traditional characters. Does anyone know more about this? eck 04:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

They are the same. One should not mix the differences in allograph with the differences in characters. -- G.S.K.Lee 11:50, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] East (東)

The article says that 日+木 = 東 "the sun behind a tree". I've heard this is an old theory that is no longer accepted. I'm by no means an expert on etymology, so could someone more knowledgeable look at this part of the article? -- Coffee2theorems 15:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Similarly, I have read somewhere that the 日 component of 明 was originally actually a window (囧) and not a sun--can someone confirm that? I have added a note to the character 集 that originally it was composed of three birds (隹), since that helps make the meaning "gather together" make more sense. --ian (talk) 18:56, 28 August 2007 (UTC)