Another Short History of Linguistics (92)

Sometimes Chinese uses changing condition to represent time instead using the time itself such as 斗转星移, luminous point in the night turning and star move. 物是人非，things still there but the person is gone.

Sometimes, Chinese colour could replace some flowers such as: 怡红快绿 joyful red happy green，绿肥红瘦, green is fat and red is thin.  万紫千红，thousands purple and hundreds red, (see picture)

Pic from: http://file21.mafengwo.net/M00/9C/8B/wKgB3FFIA_iAAmEHAA62vbnyNvU44.jpeg

Another Short History of Linguistics (91)

In the film of Red Cliff, a famous general 关羽，was using a special broadsword, its name was

青龙偃月刀, in this term, 青龙 means black dragon, 偃月 means a sleeping moon, 刀 means knife or sword. Put them together means ‘crescent like broadsword, with black dragon pattern’.  With Chinese pronunciation, these words or terms called be read easily but by any alphabetic language they are tediously long.

Pic from: http://www.jingwuhui.com/eshop/images/200906/goods_img/4652_P_1244826530415.jpg

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Some terms in recent fictions are even harder to translate into English. People think it maybe an impossible mission. I tried to translate them here.

九阴白骨爪,  in this term九 means nine, it is the largest number of one digit, so it could also means ‘most’  阴 means sinister, 白骨means white bone, 爪 means claw. Put them together the term means ‘the most sinister white bone claw’ it is a sort of Chinese Gong Fu, normally used by bad women.

 Pic from: http://mediainfo.tvscn.com:8088/media/ViewMedia-Normal-264647-jpg.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (89)

春秋，means  ‘spring autumn’ . A Chinese term for luxury life is 春花秋月, means ‘spring flower autumn moon.

兄弟，we have talked about this word, as 兄is elder brother and 弟is younger brother. Put them together 兄弟=brother. Since we can separate the word of ‘brother’ in Chinese, we can put two other characters in front of them as难兄难弟. Here the character 难 means adversity or catastrophe. The this term means ‘two brothers that have experienced the same ordeal’ or ‘a well-matched pair of brothers’

熙means daylight or time for busy,攘 means push, especially push your way forward and fro among crowd people. Put them together 熙攘means everyday busy on road. If use each of these character in double as 熙熙攘攘. It means emphatic the pronunciation of same meaning. You may split them as 天下熙熙皆为利来，天下攘攘皆为利往. The characters 天下 means under sky, 皆为 means all people are, 利 means benefit, 来means come, and 往means go. Put them together天下熙熙皆为利来，天下攘攘皆为利往 means “under the sky, all people come for benefit, and under the sky all people go for benefit.” 

Another Short History of Linguistics (88)

Language is a means that help us to understand each other. Under this idea, any symbol do this job we may call them language. For instance the mathematics, and geometry. Any tools do this job may called as tools of language such as pen, paper, telescope and TV. For they help us to understand each other and nature. In fact, we may say any branch of study is to developing a new expressing system， either by language, by picture or by geometry etc. for this reason some linguist had said that the linguistics is the original wisdom of human kind, it started before any other knowledge and wisdom was known. 

When ancient people invented such symbols, their target was looking for something can be transmitted and remembered easily and simply. If every symbol of meaning are simple then their combination will be simple too. On the other hand if the size of a symbol is smaller they combined symbol wound be smaller too. Just like the mosaic, the smaller pieces make the clearer image, for our visual range is settled, each time we can only pick up a certain amount of information. How much information of a word, a character is contained, sometimes decided by the physical or writing size of them.  Here are some example for the smaller mosaic theory:

In Chinese language 离 means left, 别 means part with. Put them together 离别 means farewell. But if one want to express the idea that after the farewell they may never see each other again, they put two character behind these two characters 生死 means life-died. As 生离死别, here the 生 means life and 死means dead. Put them together as ‘life left dead part with’.

Stories of Chinese word and term (35)

除三害eliminate three calamities； 周处was a famous general of 晋dynasty. When he was a youth, in his home town, one day he heard people rumoured there were three calamities among that county. As a young blood, 周处 asked an old man, who are they? The old man said the first calamity was a big tiger in the south mountain. Hearing this, 周处 went there and found the tiger, with a fight, he killed the tiger successfully. Then he turned back, asked the old man, what about the second calamity? The old man said, it was a big crocodile that had bitten many passengers recently. Then 周处went there killed the crocodile too. When he came back, he asked the old man, where was the third calamity? The old man said, “I had better not to tell you. If you want know it, please ask someone else.” it made the周处 unhappy, he shouted, “Why you do this to me, didn’t I kill the two calamities already? If you don’t tell me the truth, I shall kill you.”

The old man said with a sigh, “To tell you the truth, the third calamity is you. Have you ever thought that your bad temper always hurt people?”

周处didn’t say anything and left the old man, later he tried hard to cultivate his temper and became a famous general in Chinese history.

Pic from: http://hk.chiculture.net/0308/picture/d03.jpg

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From internet under the term ‘List of unsolved problems in linguistics’

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

We find such questions:

·         Is there a universal definition of word?

·         Is there a universal definition of sentence?

·         Are there any universal grammatical categories?

·         Can the elements contained in words (morphemes) and the elements contained in sentences (syntactic constituents) be shown to follow the same principles?

·         Is it possible to formally delineate languages from each other? That is to say, is it possible to use linguistic (rather than social) criteria to draw a clear boundary between two closely related languages with a dialect continuum between their respective standard forms (e.g. Occitan and Catalan)?

·         How does grammaticalization function?

·         How do creole languages emerge?

These questions looked like an identical equation of math, its definition is:  an equation that is satisfied for all values of the literal symbols. In other words it is a sentence that you don’t worry about putting what symbols in it, it always a good, balanced equation and no one can find fault for it. So once a linguist study these problems, he will never do anything wrong for they are meaningless questions.      

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I believe the so called problem of microwaves could not measure each other may have a solution later. Like other solutions, it not only solve the issue itself but it will theorize to solve a series of issues. Such as when we solved the Zeno's paradoxes, we got Limit theory simultaneously. It is a healthy way of human development.  

The linguistic study in the beginning of 21^st century look like a study of economist.  Nov 2008, during a briefing by academics at the London School of Economics on the turmoil on the international markets the Queen asked: "Why did nobody notice it?"

There are so many bright people include plenty Nobel Prize winner. They could not answer this question. For it is true, before the financial tsunami, none even one among the greatest economist had ever spoken about one word of the coming disaster. It may be a very good evidence that in most time, the so called main stream idea may pull everybody into a useless argument. It doesn’t offer any good opinion for the human kind but rather make trouble out of nothing. I believe the similar thing is appeared in linguistic study too. All the argument are not for finding a solution but for making things worse and more trouble. 

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In modern time, any essential development of philosophy is always accompanied with the development of mathematics. But, today, the students of linguistics don’t required to know math. The result is that they could not find out a real breakthrough.  In the first half of twenty century, the mainstream linguistics still looking for the mathematic spirit of linguistic idea. They made great efforts to get a model called structuralism, yet later they gave up. Instead a new trend of thought took place. A term in vogue call it Deconstructism. In fact it is an idea of ‘thinking without math’. It started form the indeterminancy principle, a phenomenon of using microwave to measure microwave. It is but a special case, no one has ever said that it could not be solved. Yet it give Deconstructism a good excuse that using the mind of mathematics is stupid.

In the history we found many times people wanted to negate the spirit of mathematics. The most famous example could be the Zeno’s paradoxes. It triggered someone declared that the mathematics is failing. There are many other examples such as someone declared that the universe could not be understood by simple mathematics and the organic matter could not be understood by human being etc.  But all of these issues were solved later.

Another Short History of Linguistics (84)

I have said that the Japanese don’t like to look for their own thinking style but love to learn and borrow from other countries, the give their practice a beautiful name as ‘adopt good points from others’ 博采众长. But in most case, they only learn language or culture from other partially and with bias. When I was talking about my linguistic law, I have said that after the Greece learn alphabetic letter from Phoenician, many great thinkers were born in Greece. But after Japanese learn characters from China, it seemed no thinker was born in that country. My reason is that when the Greece learn the alphabetic letters from Phoenician, they increased the number of sound several times by the invented vowel, while when Japanese learn character from China, they missed plenty sounds by missing the tone. That is the quantity decide thinking speed. But this phenomenon is only happened in a natural environmental. It means to say, an environmental that have not been intervened by an academic system.  For an academic system is like a bureaucratic system. Its job is filtering out thinker. So the better an academic system is, the less thinkers it will be. And the bad luck is China had the best such system. Furthermore, today, all of the teacher in such a system are the students of 鲁迅Lu Xun (the literature icon of communist party), 钱玄同Qian Xuan Tong，陈独秀Chen Du Xiu (the funder of Chinese communist party). They got their position was not by their new idea but by the length of year that they remained in school. And for this reason they still insist the view of their graduation thesis 50 years ago that ‘only alphabetic language could be the master of the world.’

Another Short History of Linguistics (83)

Between 19 and 20 centuries, the theory of ‘might is right’ had a good shown off in linguistic study. It started from Japan and followed by Chinese.

After the Chinese lost many wars during this period, lot of Chinese students that had studied in Japan came on stage, such as 鲁迅Lu Xun (the literature icon of communist party), 钱玄同Qian Xuan Tong，陈独秀Chen Du Xiu (the funder of Chinese communist party). This Japanese idea gave them good chance to show off. I have said that as a pictogram, during the long history, the Chinese could not find a good question to challenge their language so they had no way to develop their own linguistics. Now when the above scholars studied oversea, they found so many linguistic material in the western world, it daunting them. They joint together to abolish the old Chinese character writing system with their Japanese teacher. When the party took the office, the later leader 毛泽东Mao Ze Dong who didn’t know anything about linguistics was trying to adopt alphabetic letters. His hatred of Chinese Character was from Chen Du Xiu, it was but an arty-crafty idea. And even before Mao took power he tried to abolish character in 延安Yan-An in order to prove the legality of his domination. Under this idea, 1955 Bandung Conference, the first third world meeting is decided using English as working language, with the fully support of Chinese delegation. After this meeting 1.5 billion out of 3.0 billion people at that time regarding English as international language.

From above we may understand that the so called linguistics was never a study of science or philosophy but a politic scheme, intrigue against each other anyone who have right of speech will promote his linguistic idea, because at that time there is no canon, no standard of right or wrong.

 According this theory the former pictogram country such as Vietnam, Korean turned to adopt alphabetic letters one after another.    

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When 18 century came, the Europe and America broken the gate of Japan, this country found that in the world, there was another writing system with much more simple expression for the universe, they reviewed what they had learned from China during the past 10 centuries? They believed the language issue was the key reason of them that always being Chinese student and never turned to be teacher. Now if they adopted the alphabetic language, they would be the teacher or at least second-class teacher of China. With this intention they spread the theory of pictogram was the backward language. According Darwinist, the pictogram of Egyptians was gone forever and the Chinese pictogram was on the way of disappearing. This theory got positive response of western world. Coincidently, during that time, the Chinese economy from the world’s number one fell into number thirty something. With weak economy, this country experienced humiliation and aggression.

Later, more and more scholars, involved this trend. 1785 A.D. Japanese scholar declared that the Chinese and Indian pronunciation was incorrect sounds only the 50 sounds were the correct sounds of their empire. Some scholars tried to deny that their language was introduced from China, as they wanted to prove that their culture was not born from Chinese culture, they tried to find out witness about their native language before the introduction of Chinese language. After around one hundred year’s effort, they gave up their attempt, for truth is truth.

1798 A.D. they started using the geographic position to explain culture: “Only China, Korean, Indo-China using characters the rest world using alphabet; since the minority is subordinate to the majority so the character is a backward and barbarian language. The western world using twenty something characters can express everything.” This opinion didn’t cause a sensation at that time, but 1842 A.D. in the War of Opium the navy force of Qin Dynasty was beaten by the British fleet. When the news arrived Japan, their theory was proved again that the barbarian pictogram speaker would never win an alphabetic speaker.

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After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895，The Chinese Navy (the greatest one in Asia at that time) was beaten by Japan. All the warships, if had not been bombarded and sank, would surrender to Japan. It greatly enhanced morale of Japan. They really believed that the alphabetic letter was the best language and final solution of the world, otherwise they won’t win the battle so easily. Besides this they thought they were the real master of Asia. If the national power of Japanese still growing up step by step, they could still believe that the pictogram is a barbarian language.

In linguistic study the most unacceptable attitude is a theory from one’s original standing point or mother tongue without even think about other languages. A Chinese tern to express it as 屁股决定大脑 ‘buttock control the brain’. Buttock is the part of a body to sit on a chair. But someone sit on different Chair will think differently such as sitting on the chair of defender, you will think about how to explain the innocent of the accused. Sitting on the chair of prosecutor you will think about how to convict the accused. So the thinking style of defender and prosecutor is decided by which chair they sit on not by their own mind that is to say buttock decided the brain:

Pic from: http://img3.douban.com/pview/event_poster/raw/public/83eb146ddeb2d37.jpg

Another Short History of Linguistics (80)

Japan was a country that in the history it never born a greater thinker, perhaps the only idea of Japan that has been accepted by the world was alphabet language is an advanced language and pictogram is a backward and primitive one. In fact the history gave them a good chance to discover secrete of language, for they were the first pictogram country that met the matured alphabet language in recent centuries, but the Japanese loved simple solution for everything. Their nature seemed to be fickle and when they saw the prosperous of European country in 19^th century, they thought that it was the different of language that caused the situation. Then suddenly they got the sublimation that the alphabet language is the best of the world. They thought it could be a perfect idea, because if the alphabet language had problem, they would not take the responsibility (Europe would) but if the language is real good, at least they are better than China. Thinkers of other country is looking for the best thing for their own country but scholar of Japan always looking for something that someone could be worse than them. In this way they got their confident.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E6%94%B9%E9%9D%A9%E5%8F%B2

1719 A.D. certain Japanese scholars had pint out: “The Chinese language has too much characters, it is hardest language to learn in the world and on the other hand, the simple western language can express everything too.”

Another Short History of Linguistics (79)

How the Dictionary Deal the 95% Words

Many years ago, before the internet dictionary had appeared, to deal with the unfrequently used words was biggest headache for the editor of any dictionary. No one knew that a suddenly emerged word would survival how long. Some new words, especially scientific and technical words or terms might disappeared before a dictionary going to be published; normally a process took one to two years. When a customer bought a dictionary it might contain many dead words that one could never meet in the future.

Today, we know that issue can be solved by the meaning alphabets or meaning letters. That is the pictogram, as Rene Descartes had dreamed for language.

By language law, we may easy to understand Chinese choosing the compound word system was based on the usage of tone and homophone. As they got roughly four times sounds as English and dozens time of homophones, their oral expression is shorter than English words, and shorter oral expression make the compound word easy to be pronounced. The key reason is still from the tone or quantity of sounds. English is undergoing to develop the tone this changing began from the Great Vowel Shift. The long and short vowel will finally lead English to a tone language like what happened in Chinese.

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This topic is dealing with the most valuable 95% words of vocabulary vs. the most valuable 5% words of everyday use.

When we go to supermarket to buy something, the most cost (95%) of our money is not the real value of the goods but the price of distribution channel. Yet what we bought is the goods, and you can’t only buy the goods by its own value unless you avoid the distribution channel go to the place of production directly. Even thus they may not sell you the goods for protecting the distribution channel. Similarly, when we consult a doctor, 95% of our conversation is known by the patient, before seeing doctor. That means to say we pay doctor only for the rest 5% that we don’t know. Yet to tell you the most valuable 5% of conversation, the doctor had to spend 95% of his life time to learn it.

As for language study, these two examples tell us, it is easy to know 95% of our everyday conversation, because it just repeat less than 20,000 words (less than 5% of the vocabulary). But it is hard to know the rest 5% that occasionally and randomly encounter our life. It is represented by more than 95% of our vocabulary; as the English vocabulary is already over one million, it means around 980,000 words. A most difficult question is, no one knows when, which and where will meet one. Unfortunately, today, nearly all the linguists ignore this biggest and hardest issue, all of them focused on the easy 20,000 words, and busy on invent rules or grammars to teach people how to arrange these easy 20,000 words according linguists thought. 

Another Short History of Linguistics (77)

After the Greece was trying to use mathematics replacing the nature language, easy to understand that idea would stimulate the nature language to think the opposition forces. Their method was to declare that there were some certain logic in nature language that could not be replaced by math and it was called grammar.  But today, it is proved as superstitious. The language expressing is like the expressing of picture. How can some rules limit you to draw a picture? Besides the grammar was emerged from a time of small-quantity-information. It have no reason apply to a time of large-quantity-information.

Last time I have said the Shakespeare’s time English only had 20-30 thousand words. If we check the Bible we may found:

http://www.diffen.com/difference/New_Testament_vs_Old_Testament

The New Testament contains a vocabulary of 4,800 words. And The Old Testament contains a vocabulary of 5,800 words. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet

The Phoenician invent alphabet 1,200 years ahead Bible, how many words they could have? The invention of alphabet language was focus on a simple society for that quantity of words, the inventor have no idea about a vocabulary of few million words.

Another Short History of Linguistics (76)

Perhaps we can use computer memory to evaluate single person's knowledge and wisdom for people who lives in today. That is to say, the more you use the computer’s memory, the better or harder your mind have worked; not include the graphic memory. In this way we can roughly evaluate the work of mind for a single person. Similarly, we can use all the media of each time to evaluate the work of mind for people lived in that time.

With this concern a Chinese have questioned the truth of Aristotle. It was said that he had written three million words, during life time. But the question is, did he get enough writing carrier? How many parchment or papyrus should he use? In China 道德经 had five thousand characters. Confucius and his disciple together had fifty thousand Characters. The Bible have fifty thousand words. Shakespeare had eight hundred thousand words. How could Aristotle write three million words, in his living years?

The most probably reality is that there was a person called Aristotle who lived in Athens, who had written around one to three hundred words during life time. But where came the rest ninety percent of words? The answer is that they are the work of scholars of reinvasion because the power of church was too strong, any mistake may be the result of death by fire, on the other hand the development of capitalism required new idea, and so any new idea was expressed under the name of an ancient Greece.  So by translation, the word increased sharply. The strange thing is that if Aristotle did write so many words why we can't find even one page of them. While we can find thousands writing material that written by ancient scholar in China at that time.

Another Short History of Linguistics (75)

Science, may be a means of simplify language in order to help people understand the same thing in shorter period. The function is similar to the math from plus shift to multiply. But grammar do the opposite thing, it put more burden on language. In the old linguistic history no one questioned about that. Even Leibniz believed grammar is the logic of language.

By math we may easy to understand that developing tones are a real step to simplify language for it increased the interface between our brain and the world (tone language vs. none-tone language similar using the ten decimal number input system vs. the 26 English letter input system). This phenomenon no one had ever thought about for the European linguists didn’t know what tone was and the Japanese didn’t know this either although they had introduced the Chinese writing system 1,200 years ago.

Until the Japanese was ready to get rid of Chinese characters they still didn’t know the knack of tone. What they could see was that the alphabetic letters could represent the pronunciation better than the Character. This was the only reason that they were going to dump it. Coincidently, the world at that time turned to be a time that linguistics was decided by military power. Not only the French and British beat China badly, even the Japanese invaded large area of China. They believed that one of the reason for their victory was that they had shift from character language to the alphabetic letter. This idea echoed by their European counterparts.  

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This time, the Japanese are too hurry to get rid of the Chinese character without second thinking but a politic emotion.

During last few decades, some scholar were discussing on a book ‘Black Athena’

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/arts/martin-bernal-black-athena-scholar-dies-at-76.html?_r=0

Martin Bernal, whose three-volume work “Black Athena” ignited an academic debate by arguing that the African and Semitic lineage of Western civilization had been scrubbed from the record of ancient Greece by 18th- and 19th-century historians steeped in the racism of their times.

As: http://www.theafrican.com/Magazine/Athena/intro.htm

Said: “At the core of the debate were two questions: were the ancient Egyptians a Black African people, and to what extent was the civilization of ancient Greece indebted to learning borrowed or stolen from ancient Egypt.”

I believe that at least the idea of semantics of Aristotle was borrow from Egyptian.