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Bisyllability in Chinese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7028 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes  5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 1 of 4 21 November 2007 at 8:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, I promised to talk a bit about this, so here I am.
Someone told me that a common misonception is that Chinese is monosyllabic: well, old Chinese used to be that way, at least based on the literature. This has resulted in a few special features of old Chinese: 1) one word often have multiple, widely-differing meanings. Sometimes a word appears several times in an article, each time bearing a different meaning! 2) Chinese's inflectional vestige was more evident. Some words had different tones according to their part of speech: verb is usually forth tone. (雪: shue3, snow, shue4, to snow) This feature is almost non-existent in modern usage. Characters in modern Chinese still have mostly multiple meanings, but words don't anymore. That has to do largely with the topic here: bisyllability. Bisyllabic words are called 複詞 (fu4 tsi2, compound word), not to be confused with 副詞 (fu4 tsi2, adverb). Many bisyllabic words exist in modern Chinese, either through invention of new words or expansion of older ones. However, this phenomenon is by no means restricted to modern Chinese: old Chinese literature are also filled with bisyllabic words with various formation methods. It is being used as an important rhetoric method as well (鑲嵌, xiang1 qian1, to enchase), as it usually creates symmetry or contrast in a word, or provide necessary rhymes or word counts. Bisyllabic words in Chinese can be categorized into several groups. 1.Continuous words (連綿詞, lian2 mian2 tsi2) This words usually consist of 2 characters that share a radical (蝴蝶, hu2 die2, butterfly), one same syllable onset (橄欖, gan3 lan3, olive) and/or rhyme (朦朧, meng2 leng2, blurry), etc. The characters, when standing alone, usually have little or no meaning, or at least the same meaning as the original words. These words are actually the part where Chinese could certainly do without hanzi, but unfortunately they're also exceptionally beautiful. 2. Affixed words (鑲字 xiang1 zi4) One character that has little or no meaning sticked to another that has a distinct, functioning meaning. Very common examples are abundant in everyday usage: chair (椅子 i3 zi), table (桌子 zhuo1 zi), teacher (老師, lao3 shi1), tiger (老虎 lao3 hu3), mouse (老鼠 lao3 shu3), etc. Also seen in four-character idioms, such as: 亂七八糟 (luan4 qi1 ba1 zao1, horribly disordered; the "qi1 ba1" has no meaning), 千軍萬馬 (qian1 jun1 wan4 ma3, thousands of soldiers; "qian1" and "wan4" here actually do have a meaning, but not as the actual number but as a description to the massive amount of soldiers). 3. Homonym repetition (同義複詞 tong2 yi4 fu4 tsi2, 增字 zeng1 zi4) Two characters that have the same meaning are put together. It's also pretty common: examples include 購買 (gou4 mai3, to purchase; both means "to buy"), 方法 (fang1 fa3, method; both means "way"), 消滅 (xiao1 mie4, to eliminate; both means "to destroy"), 美麗 (mei3 li4, beautiful) 唯獨 (wei2 du2, solely), etc. It's also a way in old Chinese literature to create emphasis, such as 崩殂 (beng1 tsu2, (the emperor) to pass away). 4. Contrast Word (偏義複詞 pian1 yi4 fu4 tsi2, 配字 pei1 zi4) Two characters that have opposite meaning are put together, but only one's meaning is retained. This may seem strange at first, but one common example is 忘記 (wang4 ji4, to forget, lit. forget-remember). Other examples, either modern or old, are: 動靜 (dong4 jing4, movement, lit. movement-stillness), 恩怨 (en1 yuan4, enmity, lit. kindness-enmity), 異同 (yi4 tong2, different, lit. different-same)*, etc. *Definitely only in old Chinese literature. 5. Complex words (詞語並列結構, tsi2 yu3 bing4 lie4 jie2 gou4) Don't get scared by the long name. These are in fact the straightforward ones: two characters with different meanings are put together, forming a word that has both meaning combined. Examples include 成功 (cheng2 gong1, to succeed, lit. achieve-feat), 醫院 (yi1 yuan4, hopsital, lit. curing-facility), 天地 (tian1 di4, the world, lit. sky-earth)*, 內隱 (nei4 yin3, hidden inside, lit. inside-hidden), etc. *Note that opposite meaning doesn't ensure Contrast Word. Of course, a lot of times it's hard to see which category a certain word falls in. Sometimes, people disagree on whether the two characters has the same meaning or not, as Chinese characters usually have multiple meanings, as stated above. Take 狂亂 (kuang2 luan4, wild, crazy) for example: the meaning of these two characters do overlap a little, but they're not identical either. Sometimes we don't know the character's meaning: 慌張 (huang1 zhang1, hurried/anxious): what does the "zhang1" mean? Is it Affixed Word? Homonym Repetition? Or even Contrast Word? I'm not exactly sure myself. There are cases where meanings of characters evolved themselves: 沐浴 (mu4 yu4, to bathe) could be considered Homonym Repetition now, but the characters' original meanings were "to wash one's hair" and "to wash one's body" respectively, making it simply Complex Word. Sometimes the characters have meanings that are not well recognized in everyday usage. For instance, 宇宙 (yu3 zhou4, universe) can be erroneously considered as Continuous Word or Homonym Repetition: however, they mean respectively "all direction in space" and "from the past to the future in time". The word that triggered this topic was 世界 (shi4 jie4, the world). Come to think of it, it seems to me now that it is actually a Complex Word, as they mean respectively "many generations in time" and "border, area". I'm very curious about whether this phenomenon occurs in other languages or not. Of course, it doesn't necessarily have to be 1 syllable -> 2 syllables. I just wonder if Continuous Words, Affixed Words, Homonym Repetition or Contrast are present under any form in other languages? The closest to Affixed Words that I can think of is in Japanese, where we sometimes say "konoha (木の葉)" "happa (葉っぱ)" instead of just "ha (葉)" for leaves, and "kaminoke (髪の毛)" instead of just "kami (髪)" for hair. In addition, words like "tiny-weeny" "hocus pocus" seem to be Continuous Words or Affixed words to me. For more information in Chinese, see: http://hoitse.yiima.com.tw/chpaper/sdmw.htm http://hoitse.yiima.com.tw/chpaper/sdmw.htm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6386 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 2 of 4 25 November 2007 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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The above is great summary of the topic. Any reason why chose to deviate from the standard Pinyin, though? :-)
For anyone looking for even greater detail, the following book will be of great help. It is a very detailed account of all possible ways to form words in the Chinese language. By the way, it says bisyllabic words represent over 80% of the modern language. The Chinese Lexicon: A Comprehensive Survey by Po-Ching Yip 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jee Senior Member Australia Joined 6309 days ago 105 posts - 105 votes Studies: English | Message 3 of 4 26 November 2007 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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总结得很棒 Edited by Jee on 26 November 2007 at 7:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7028 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 4 of 4 28 November 2007 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||
Only because I'm not familiar with Pinyin. :P You can PM me to correct my mistakes in using pinyin. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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