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> I've attempted in this sketch to lay out, by analogy, the nature and structure of the Chinese writing system. All of the concepts apply Do they? I think ther
by brazzy 2y ago
> I've attempted in this sketch to lay out, by analogy, the nature and structure of the Chinese writing system. All of the concepts apply
Do they? I think there is one section that has nothing whatsoever to do with how Chinese works, namely "Inflections". Chinese does not have them, at all. I guess the author felt compelled to at least give a token acknowledgement to the concept, even while it was irrelevant to what he was really going for (a parable about the Chinese writing system).
- akavi 2y agoChinese has fewer inflections than English, but does have 儿 as a nominalizer (and one which is quite productive in northern dialects)
- canjobear 2y agoInterestingly Chinese did have things like this at the time the writing system formed, and they simply weren't written. You can see remnants of the old morphological system today in characters that alternate in tone. For example there used to be a suffix -s that turned a verb into a noun. During the Han Dynasty this turned into -h, and then later turned into the falling/departing/fourth tone. Hence 教 jiāo is the verb "to teach", from Old Chinese *kraw, and 教 jiào is the noun "teaching" from Old Chinese *kraws.