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

On Tuesday, August 10, 2004, at 01:02 , Philip Newton wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Aug 2004 18:18:36 +0100, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>> Y.R. Chao gives an example of a
>> story written entirely in 36 characters, all pronounced _xi_ in one of
>> the
>> four tones. The story would make no sense at all when read aloud in
>> modern
>> standard Chinese, but for some who knows Classical Chinese they story
>> reads:
>> "The West Creek rhinoceros enjoys romping and playing. Every evening, Xi
>> Xi [name of person*] takes the rhinoceros to play. Xi Xi meticulously
>> practises washing the rhinoceros. The rhinoceros sucks the creek and
>> playfully attacks Xi. Laughing, Xi Xi hopes to stop [the rhinoceros]
>> playing. Too bad - the rhinoceros, neighing, enjoys attacking Xi."
>
> Interesting -- do you have the text of this story somewhere (in
> Chinese characters, natch)?
I do - but a bit tricky to email  :-)

If you can get hold of a copy of his "Language and Symbolic Systems" (an
excellent book IMO), you'll find the character text on page 120.

If you have a problem getting hold of the book, I could scan the page and
mail it privately as an attachment.
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On Monday, August 9, 2004, at 10:41 , Steg Belsky wrote:

[snip]
> Ohmygod!
> That's amazing!
> Any idea where i could get a recording of this?
> It'd drive my brother crazy!  He hates the consonant represented by |X|
> in Pinyin... he calls it "that damn Chinese 'X' sound"! :-D
No, I don't know of any recording. If you can manage the Mandarin tones &
want to read it yourself to annoy brother, here it is (I've used numbers
for tones - as my mailer doesn't seem to like i-breve):
xi1 xi1 xi4 xi3 xi1 xi4.
xi1 xi1 xi4 xi4 xi1 xi1 xi4.
xi1 xi1 xi4 xi4 xi2, xi3 xi1.
xi1 xi1 xi1, xi4 xi2 xi1.
xi1 xi1 xi1 xi1 xi1 xi2 xi4.
xi1 xi1 xi1 xi1 xi3 xi2 xi1.

You see I miscounted the characters yesterday. There's 40 of them.

Have fun!

Ray
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