Re: NATLANG: Chinese parts of speech (or lack thereof)

--- John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:

>
> The oldest known writing systems are based on
> meaningful-syllables;
> this has been invented three or four times
> independently (Sumerian,
> Chinese, Mayan for sure; Egyptian possibly).  This
> system has repeatedly
> been simplified, especially when applied to new
> languages, to a purely
> syllabic system (one symbol for each syllable).
So perhaps that's it: Chinese is still closer to the
meaning, the other systems lost themselves on the
perdition ways of phonetics. They forgot the essential
and sticked to the details :-)

(I also think that the idea of making every character
included in a perfect square in much more satisfying
than having variable length alphabetic words. You can
sit before the character meaning "mountain" and
meditate, it's much harder when looking at the English
word "mountain", or at the French one, "montagne".
Chinese seems to give a direct grip onto the world).

(snip)

> In the meantime, various other systems have been
> devised more or less
> independently: these turn out to always be syllabic.
>
Yes, and now we're coming back to pictograms, with no
reference to phonetics at all (because they are
international). I have a carboard box near me just
now, there was a "speaker system" inside. I can see no
less than 6 pictograms on it:
- one with two arrows pointing up, meaning, I suppose
"this side up"
- one with an umbrella, "keep away from rain, water or
whatever similar"
- one with the number 8 over two horizontal lines,
"store no more than 8 on a pile"
- one with two hands surrounding a box ("handle with
care" ?)
- one with two curved arrows interlaced ("material to
be recycled") (looks very taoist)
- one representing both loudspeakers in a very
schematic style ("includes a pair of them").

There is also a much more detailed drawing of the
loudspeakers, so one can imagine how they look. Then
there are various mentions in various languages, for
customs requirings I suppose (only customs officers
won't be able to guess what is inside just from
looking at the drawings).

So it seems we came back to the beginning of it,
except that this time, we won't bother any more for
phonetics ;-)




=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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