From: Allen Haaheim (ah@uvic.ca)
Date: Tue Nov 30 2004 - 02:15:29 CST
Hi again,
Thank you Ken, I was speaking of Chinese in particular and the Chinese
character in general, and did not mention the exception of transliterations
from foreign languages into Chinese, nor changes after borrowing by other
languages. Yes, such characters are numerous enough to make the second
category Ken explains. Other exceptions also exist: the old fan-ch'ieh
method of glossing character pronunciation uses characters purely as
syllabics. Pictographs and phono-pictographs might also constitute an
exception when they function as both logographs and pictographs, though the
examples here would be a few simple graphs--many less than there are foreign
loanwords. Ad hoc phonetic loans within Chinese were also made by writers
for expedience or convenience, or, in the case of U+86A4 Ôé ("flea") for
U+65E9 Ôç ("early") in _Mencius_, for reasons I do not know. No doubt there
are more exceptions.
>> But somehow "ideograph" has become the standard term in use outside
>> the field of experts in Chinese linguistics (because of Ezra Pound et
>> al., perhaps?).
>I don't think you have to look to Ezra Pound's poetic misrepresentations of
>the nature of Chinese to find reasons here.
I should have mentioned rather Herrlee Creel, who seems to be the chief
proponent of the ideographic view in the twentieth century. It goes back to
at least the fifteenth century. Pound probably helped popularize it
somewhat.
>"East Asian logograph" would have been technically a little more correct,
>but not absolutely right, either. "Ideograph" wasn't used because the
>standardizers were confused about how Chinese and Japanese writing systems
>worked, but simply because it was a usable term in the right ballpark,
>available for a specialized technical usage, and less objectionable than
>most of the alternatives.
It seems to me the problem is that if "ideograph" is taken in its strict
sense by the uninitiated, it is too easy to slip into the exotic
"orientalizing" notion of Han characters in two wrong ways: as a set of
cryptic symbols for concepts, and as symbols that are divorced from
pronunciation. Speaking for Chinese (and I would suspect a large number of
Japanese kanji onyomi), "logograph" simply does a more accurate and much
less misleading job, because it means that characters stand for
pronunciations of morphemes, and thus that phonological information is
conveyed part and parcel in them. "Phono-logographs" constitute "nearly 90%"
of the historical Chinese language according to William G. Boltz. So I still
don't see how "ideograph," even with current polysemous usage, is the
preferable word. It gives the wrong idea about what most Han characters
fundamentally are: a "graphic representation of the sounds of the Chinese
language," and this would seem to more than cancel out any
advantages--perhaps I'm still not understanding them. I still do not see how
"logograph" is not the better term by more than just a little, when it
clearly describes the nature of the vast majority of Han characters encoded
in Unicode (i.e., historical Chinese). How could "logograph" have been
deemed a less preferable word? I am curious as to just how this was decided.
(A reply as short as "convention" would sate my curiosity. :)
The phrase "radical-radical compound" on the suggested webpage
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Chinese%20writing%20system seems
to cloud the issue of what a radical is. "Radical" is, I think, defined by
function, so, because a lexicographical standard strives to classify each
character only once by its radical (while noting ambiguities, etc.), only
one component of a given character can function as its radical: one primary
semantic component deemed fundamental--its "signific"--by which it is
organized lexicographically, whether or not other components may also be
used as radicals in other characters, or may be related semantically. On the
web page, a phrase such as "radical-semantic compound," or "radical-based
compound" would be, I believe, less potentially confusing.
As noted by Edward, ambiguity as to which component of a given character
constitutes the radical is not uncommon--ambiguity of the reader, or between
dictionaries.
Cheers,
Allen Haaheim
-----Original Message-----
From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On
Behalf Of Edward H. Trager
Sent: November 29, 2004 7:04 PM
To: unicode@unicode.org
Subject: Re: Radicals and Ideographs
On Monday 2004.11.29 16:30:06 -0800, Allen Haaheim wrote:
> >they often (not always) combine 1 or more radicals, with 1 or more
strokes
> >that are not radicals themselves.
>
> Sorry Philippe, this is simply not true, and your email follows this with
a
> few dubious statements. A Han character has one radical. That is, it can
be
> catalogued under only one radical, exceptions before codification
> notwithstanding. The fact that other components in a given character may
be
> used as radicals in other contexts is irrelevant and can only confuse
> matters here.
To clarify:
A Han character will always be classified under just one radical in,
for example, a dictionary. But there can be differences between
dictionaries. For most characters, such as the previously-mentioned
ÈÑ (ren4 ¨Ö¨ã "pregnant"), it is very obvious to a literate speaker
of Chinese or Japanese that the radical is Å® (nu:3 ¨Ë¨é¡¦ woman). But
for
a subset of characters, it is not so obvious, so much so that
dictionaries may contain a "Table of Characters that are difficult
to locate" (ëy™z×Ö±í). For example, "ÄÐ" (nan2 ¨Ë¨â "male") is a
simple character, but it is difficult to know whether the radical
used to find this character in a dictionary is "Ìï" (field) or "Á¦"
(power/strength) -- in this case, the radical is "Ìï". Of course
a lot of modern dictionaries use pinyin or a similar phonetic system
which is great *if* you know the pronounciation: When you do not
know the pronounciation, then look up by radical followed by a count
of the remaining strokes after the radical is a traditional and
still commonly-used method.
- Ed Trager
> Allen Haaheim
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