Stories of Chinese word and term (16)

㧑戈反日，direct the sun going back by 戈. 戈 was a normal weapon of Ancient China. Around 1059 BC the army of 周 was going to overthrow the rule of 商 dynasty. Duke 鲁阳 was a brave warrior of 周. He fought with the enemy bravely until the sunset it started to be dark. He didn’t want to stop the fight, so he used his weapon (戈) to direct the sun travel back three time continuously. Later this term is used for someone who get special courage and vigour.

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Another Short History of Linguistics (68)

Leibniz developed the idea of Rene Descartes form:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis

“Many Leibniz scholars writing in English seem to agree that he intended his characteristica universalis or “universal character” to be a form of pasigraphy, or ideographic language. This was to be based on a rationalised version of the ‘principles’ of Chinese characters, as Europeans understood these characters in the seventeenth century. From this perspective it is common to find the characteristica universalis associated with contemporary universal language projects like Esperanto, auxiliary languages like Interlingua, and formal logic projects like Frege’s Begriffsschrift. The global expansion of European commerce in Leibniz's time provided mercantilist motivations for a universal language of trade so that traders could communicate with any natural language.”

In the time of Leibniz, with only around 30,000 words in each developed language, he didn’t think about the issue of vocabulary soaring up to one million. Or we may say that the Leibniz knew the vocabulary explosion issue unconsciously. But today, this issue turned to be the most important issue in linguistic area and it seemed no one dared touch this topic.

Stories of Chinese word and term (15)

巫山云雨 rain and cloud over 巫mountain. Today, we know that the reservoir of three gorges is the greatest Hydraulic engineering in the world. Three 峡gorges means瞿塘峡、巫峡、西陵峡. You may see the middle one is巫峡, above this gorge was a mountain called巫mountain. During the time if war states (403-221 BC), there was a story. The king of 楚 named 熊槐 once had a travel there, when he felt tired, he fell asleep. He dreamed a beautiful girl came to see him. She said that she was the daughter of 巫mountain, she was love to share her pillow and mat with the king. The king understood what she meant and had a good sleep with her. When he left, the girl said, “If you want to see me again, I am living in the巫mountain, here in the morning is cloud and in the evening is rain.”

Later in Chinese literature they used this term as metaphor of making love. A recent film using this term as name.

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Another Short History of Linguistics (67)

For our case, if we don’t start from ‘substance’ (see 62) instead we start from ‘human’ then only two words would lead our memory to the right spot. If we start from ‘Aristotle’, with one word it would lead us to the right spot. That is to say sometimes we have to ignore some useless information for a particular case otherwise, our expressing would have no way to practice. Because our expression style is a linear one and our working memory is as short as lasting 2 second, if every word is as long as 2 second then there will be no room for the configuration.

For this reason, the Chinese characters are in fact a sub-substance. With this arrangement the metaphysics idea of Aristotle turned to be physics reality of language. As above said the Chinese find a neutral character 马 horse, then put plenty adjective to qualify it as female-horse, male-horse, and young-horse. From the female-horse split into one-year-female-horse young-female-horse, old-female-horse, etc. then put on the colour as white-female-horse, red-young-female-horse etc. As every characters is correspondently shorter than English word, all these words are in tolerable length.

When Marco Polo (September 15, 1254 – January 8, 1324) first brought some Chinese information into Europe, the European people admired the Chinese language, especially scholars as Leibnitz. Some other religion figure even thought it was the original language from God. The later development of semantic theory was carried by Rene Descartes and Leibniz. Leibniz invented the first mechanic computer and he got inspiration from the Chinese 易经invented the binary system also.

But after few hundred years, the mainstream academic world reckon that the Chinese language is a backward language as bad as the Egyptians pictogram; a disappearing culture. 

Stories of Chinese word and term (14)

屐齿之折 the tooth of geta has broken. Today, we think that geta is a footwear from Japan. Yet it was started from China. The original geta looked like clogs. The Japanese used the same character 屐 for it as the Chinese did. At beginning there was a tooth in front of the geta to hold the over long Chinese robe not to be stepped on. In the year 383 there was a war between 东晋and 前秦. 东晋sent eighty thousand soldiers to meet 前秦’s eight hundred thousand soldiers. Everyone believed that 东晋 would lose the war, but the result is on the contrary, they won. When the news of victory arrived at the supreme command, the marshal 谢玄 who was a civil officer, was playing the game of go. After he read the report, he kept on playing, as if nothing had happened.

After a while his opponent asked him, “What happened?” 

The answer was, “Nothing, my children had won the war for me.”

His manner was calm. But later when he moved to leave, he kicked on the threshold and broken the tooth of his geta.

Calm is a main virtue of Chinese people. Later this term means calm and hidden the inner happiness. 

 Pic from: http://www.chinaculture.org/img/2007-07/03/xinsrc_250704031012194311659.jpg

And: http://amuseum.cdstm.cn/AMuseum/ancitech/science/image/01/s1a_ad03_s01.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (66)

Someone using a word as ideogram to explain how a pictogram express abstracted concept. But I explain it very simple, if they can be expressed by picture, they use picture, if they can’t, they just put a relative picture and a sound to distinguish it. For instance this picture:

The character 足means ‘foot’, any meanings relative with it, will have this symbol.  

跑run,跳jump，跃hop，蹦bounce，蹲squat，路road，跤falls，跺stomp，踱strolled，跟follow，跪kneel，踩stamp，踢kick，踏tread etc.

Anyway, anything about foot and then the other part is only supply a sound to make it distinguished from other words. (In ancient time, the other part might be represent meaning too.) It is also a sort of semantics.

As above, when Aristotle study the semantic language while the pictogram language didn’t think it is worth for discussion, again the pictogram country lost a chance for develop an idea of linguistics. 

So we may say the Chinese is formalizing the sematic language. The key reason is first the picture is nature connected symbol, the second reason is the pictogram language find out enough phonetic symbols by tone for the necessary, while the alphabetic language doesn’t. That is why the ontology or semantic language keep stay as a metaphysics language in alphabetic languages. For instance from substance to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the concept changed 7 times, each time reduce the scope inside our memory (as Aristotle said ‘soul’), if we want this idea shift from metaphysics into physics language then we have put at least six words in from of them. That is a long compound word as substance-body-living-animal-human-Aristotle. If in any sentence, you have plenty such words, it would be ridiculous and bulky, although everyone can understand it better. But we can reduce them to the combination of two words; the last two words that is human-Aristotle. In this case, we suppose that when we say the word ‘human’ everybody know it belong to Substance-body-living-animal-human-Aristotle, as we have said that every word is a door to our minds, why every time should we only started from the single door of substance? So we may ignore this word-string and only focus on the last two classes as human-Arstotle, like what the binary nomenclature did.  From this we know that language is a tool that carrying any full meaning in a fastest simplest way, the reason is as much as possible to concentrate our mind on a smaller point. 

Stories of Chinese word and term (13)

矛盾 spear vs. shield, this story was from a book named 《韩非子》. A man selling weaponry at the market. At the beginning he said, “My spear is the best one, in the world. It will pierce any shield in the world.” After a while, he started to promote his shield, “My shield is the best one in the world, for no spear can pierce my shield.” At this moment, a passenger asked, “What if using your spear to attack your shield?”

This story telling us that every word must cooperate what you have said. Otherwise, contradiction will appeared. In fact the English word ‘contradiction’ translate into Chinese is 矛盾.

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Another Short History of Linguistics (65)

When we start to thinking, we may inter the interface of thinking from plenty doors of our mind. We may regard any of the first word or character as a door. The word ‘entry’ is very good word. It seemed to me is an entrance to the CPU or the room of human’s mind. For an individual, the so called knowledge, is something you can remembered; those you cannot remembered is not knowledge that belong to you. A word or a character or other meaning carrier is an entrance that leading you to the address, where the memory you wanted is stored. Then the Chines writing system have around 3,000 entrance, according the number of 3,000 characters in used. English speaker has around 30,000 entrances according the number that they can remembered. When you start to thinking or speaking, you may started from any door. That is the difference between human’s mind and computer is that when start operation, the human’s mind can started from any door of either picture characters or a certain word, but the computer had to start from one door as a keyboard or from a certain picture that human chosen.

Semantic or ontology reflected that after adopted alphabetic language, the people missing the structure of pictogram. For when developing a new words, the pictogram had to have using a structure of semantic or ontology, because the image of male horse, female horse and young horse has no different. The best way to distinguish them is put an adjective in front of a neutral horse to indicate what sort of horse it is. While the alphabetic language adopted new words from various local accents. That is to say, once they need a word and find a different local accent then they adopted it as a new word in their own language. 

Stories of Chinese word and term (12)

354 BC, kingdom魏 invaded kingdom 赵. They surrounded the capital of kingdom 赵 for one year. Then the king of kingdom 赵 sought help from another state kingdom 齐 (we have said that it turned to be a strong superpower at that time). When the king of kingdom齐 got the request, he asked his officers how to response it? His strategist 孙膑 said, “Your majesty, we don’t send troop to kingdom 赵 instead we send troop to kingdom魏, for as their troop was in the 赵, it is defenceless kingdom now. We surround its capital, then they must withdraw their army to save their capital. When their troop is on the way home, we can ambush them there.”

Everything happened according the plan of孙膑. Their army not only saved the kingdom 赵but killed the chief commander of their enemy. 

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Another Short History of Linguistics (64)

In the eyes of Pythagoras the universe is made of numbers. And indeed, for the last two thousand years, mathematics worked as a special language to express phenomena that the normal language couldn’t. Now, it turned to be more and more important in our life. The reason is that it always find simpler expression for us, step by step. For instance the multiply is the simplification of many plus process, the equation is the simplification of putting many questions together. The calculus is the simplification of unlimited calculations of a certain question.

Simplification is the evolution of any expression method. For human’s mind is the same. It could not be up date like we treat the hardware of computer, to make it easier accepting of more message is the only way of language development.

Yet look at what linguists did on language since the Greek introduced alphabetic letters from the ancient Phoenician?  According some linguists that at the time of Rome, grammar and expression turned to be two different things. Those good in grammar were no good in expressing and those good in expressing were no good in grammar. 

Stories of Chinese word and term (11)

黔驴技穷 donkey of黔was at its wit’s end. It similar the English term “show feet of clay”.

黔 is a Chinese province, today it is called 贵州. In ancient time, there had no donkey. One day, someone introduced a donkey to that area. Soon he found it was useless, for so many
hillocks that a donkey could not carry goods and cargo like plain or flatland. So he left the donkey alone. A tiger saw it. At beginning, the tiger regarded it as a big fellow, a wonder. The tiger hid in grove to peep the donkey. After a period, the tiger began to approach it. Then, it studied and investigated the monster.

One day, the donkey uttered a loud heehaw. It threatened the tiger very much, it thought that the donkey was ready to bite it and escaped far away. But when the tiger looked back, the donkey didn’t do anything. The tiger felt confident and got closer the donkey again. The manner of tiger turned from serious to intimate. Step by step, it started to touch and bump the donkey. The donkey felt angry and kicked the tiger by the hoof. Now the tiger understood that the only skill or ability of the donkey was kicking. So it jumped on the donkey and ate it.  

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Another Short History of Linguistics (63)

Mathematics required a more abstract thinking style than literature. Or we may say that mathematics leaves us further than literature. Those who doesn’t like mathematics had tried to attract the people’s attention by claiming that the language had a special rule called grammar. Someone even called grammar as the logic of language. But after few hundred years’ development of this grammar, every language turned to be more complex. Until René Descartes who called back this development a little bit. Instead, he was trying to invent a new expressing system called universal language, “The great advantage of such a language would be that it would represent everything ‘distinctement.’ Yet, the great problem faced by someone who wanted to create such a language was the nature of the human imagination itself. ”

Such language is planed mathematically so among the meaning of words, there could be no overlap and no gap (grammar is making overlap as double expression). Anyway the idea is a simplest, clearest language. Stand in the viewpoint of mathematics, it is very easy to understand such a language, but in the viewpoint of literature, it could be a little bit hard to know. Although the idea was fruitless one, yet it gave an imagination of classify the space and that was the Cartesian coordinate which is used by modern people every day.

Here we may find that in ancient time that the Egyptian pictogram inspired Aristotle about semantics. One and half thousand years later, the pictogram of Chinee inspired Cartesian for universal language.

Stories of Chinese word and term (10)

狐假虎威， fox borrow majestic from tiger.

宣was the king of kingdom 楚. 昭奚恤was his chancellor. One day, the king asked his officers, “People said that the kings beyond our northern border are afraid 昭奚恤. Is it true?”

No one could answer this question, one of his officers named 江乙 said, “My lord, I know a story that one day, a tiger was wandering around for hunting. He caught a fox, the fox said, ‘You should not eat me, for god sent me as the king of animal kingdom. If you eat me, you violate the order of god. If you don’t believe me, then follow me to see what would be the reaction when the animals meet me.’ The tiger trusted the fox and followed him, it was true that every animals escaped from their presence. ” 江乙explained, “The tiger didn’t know that all the animals were afraid himself but not the fox. Now your majesty has a land of five thousand square kilometres and millions soldiers, but you appointed 昭奚恤 a high position. All the kingdoms beyond the northern border are in fact afraid the army of your majesty, it just like the animals were afraid the tiger. ”

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Another Short History of Linguistics (62)

Semantic is the property of pictogram, when Aristotle first introduce it in to alphabet language, people felt very exciting. But semantic language like any other expression system that only under certain condition it may communicated conveniently. Out of that limit, it won’t work. The so called ontology is out of the limit. It believe that everything came from a unique word called substance, like what Aristotle shown us:

You may noticed that between the species and individual, the ‘differentiae’ is missing. And obviously the differentiae is the name of the person itself. Can we subdivide the person into Aristotle’s wife, Aristotle’s son, Aristotle’s daughter, Aristotle’s grandson, Aristotle’s teacher, Aristotle’s student, Aristotle’s lawyer, Aristotle’s baker etc.? Of course we can. But these expression is meaningless. For what we are necessary is a language that it may increase the utility rate of every words and it may reducing the energy to learn it.

So the only way to evaluate a language. One is how easy to learn, the other is how easy to use. That means to say the compound words are easy to learn (semantics) but hard to speak (for it longer than single word) while the synthesis words are hard to learn but easy for express. Only increase the number of species of sound we can get benefit from both side. From this view, we may also easy understand that anything the grammar done is making language complex.

Ontology came from the thought that believe everything came from a simple origin, similar the Taoism or Confucianism. But it was proved not true. The word science translated into Japanese as 科学means sections or branches study, against the old knowledge that believed all theory was the same. It wanted to express the idea that every branch of knowledge has its own property.    

Stories of Chinese word and term (9)

一鼓作气, accomplish with one effort,

Last time we have said two dukes from 齐and 鲁talking about how to rule their states. Few hundred years later, there was a war between these two states. At that time the 齐turned to be a powerful state already and 鲁 changed into a weak state.

684 BC,  a war had started between these two states. Against expectation, the weak dukedom 鲁 defeated the powerful dukedom 齐. The reason was from a normal person of dukedom 鲁 named 曹刿. He was neither a high rank officer nor a general but he was a good strategist. When he learnt about that the dukedom 齐was going to invade his country, he required the duke of 鲁, gave him a chance to speak.

Before he did this, all of his friends advised him, ‘It is a very dangerous job. The meat eater (at that time only officers can have meat.) have to take responsibility for the dukedom. It is none your business.’

But曹刿 insisted his own opinion. He said to them, ‘Those high rank officer cannot see beyond their nose. How can we trust them with our life?’

Finally he persuaded the duke to trust him to direct the battle.

When the two armies getting closer, the troop of 齐beat the drum for a charge. The Duke of 鲁 was doing the same thing but 曹刿 stopped him said, ‘Wait, we can’t do it.’ Their enemy found the troop of 鲁 had no reaction, they beat the drum again. Again there was no reaction. Then the 齐 army beat the drum for the third time. When they believed the coward 鲁 army would no reaction again, 曹刿 said, ‘Now, it is time, let’s go.’ Then all his men followed him to attack their enemy. Soon their enemy had collapsed.

After the war, the duke asked曹刿 how you win the battle?

曹刿said, ‘When two army meet, normally the powerful side always accomplish with one effort. But if you avoid this, the second time it will be weaker, and at the third time all the courage is gone.’

Another Short History of Linguistics (61)

The development of language should be like the development of software. That is to say the target of development is contained more information within less symbols. For the human kind is going to have more and more knowledge. So, we have always to leave a big room for future. Once we stand on this base solidly, we can make further development. The mathematic symbols can be regard new character or words to language. For the target of language is storing or communicating meaning and knowledge and mathematic symbols not only doing this task very well but clearer and simpler. For instance, without number, you could not even tell people how sweet or salty a food is. Without number you could not express how cold and hot a weather is. Not only this, sometimes we can use mathematic symbols to express emotion too.

A Chinese has fabricated a story: When he was 50, René Descartes lived in the city of Stockholm with poverty, one day when he was drawing some math graphic on the side of road, a young girl passed by. She asked him many questions about what he was drawing and went away. Soon Descartes got an offer to be the mathematic tutor of princess of Sweden. Later he found this princess was in fact that girl he met roadside. Not too long the princess fell in love with Descartes but the king interfere this affair. He forced Descartes to leave his kingdom and forbade his daughter to see him again. Before Descartes died, he wrote 13 letters to the princess continuously, but all of them were withheld by the king. The final one had got no words but a formula r=a (1-sinθ). No one knew what it meant. When the king on his dying bed, he had shown this letter to his daughter. Seeing this the princess cried, for it was the math graphic of heart.

Stories of Chinese word and term (8)

 子罕相宋，子罕 work as Chancellor of dukedom宋: last time we have talked about子罕 refusing jade. The same子罕 was an ambition fellow too. One day, he told the duke: “A state could be peaceful one must under the condition of right reward and punish. Everybody love the reward, so Your Majesty do it, and then they will love you. But things like fine penalty and killing, everybody hate it, I will do it for you.” The duke said, “Good, I do the good thing for people, and you stand the bad name and complaining. You are really good chancellor for me.” After this, people gradually understand that all the penalty and execution was decided by 子罕, so every officer flattered him and people were dread of him. Instead no one care about the duke. Before one year 子罕 usurped the power of the duke.

Another Short History of Linguistics (60)

When we design a mosaic, we know that smaller mosaic give clearer image. Because we can have more choice to fix them in the same picture. Similarly, when we compare pictogram and alphabetic language, we found that pictogram seemed had smaller symbols for meaning. Therefore they may insert clearer image to the listener’s mind. Or we may say as we apperceive a meaning from ether vision or audition. The pictogram seemed more compact. For this reason, the pictogram could express anything flexibly. Here are some examples.

When someone feels the two-word term 超强 (means ‘very strong’) boring, he may split them as four-word term 走召弓虽.

Sometimes when we talking about the relationship of two countries, the Chinese usually take the first character of each country to form a new word. For instance中国means China, 美国means America. While 中美means Sino-America.