"Sheng1" in Compounds

[Altair]

I am new to the board and have a ton of questions I would love to ask, but alas not enough time to post them all. If I do not respond for a week or so to any replies, please excuse my apparent silence in advance. All it means is that my home and work life our squeezing out any computer time I have. Let me also apologize in advance for not posting in characters and for my bad Pinyin. I have not yet mastered either the art of melding computers with characters or the art of spacing and punctuation in Pinyin and may post some questions on them later.

My first question revolves around the meaning of the word “sheng1” in various compounds. I presume that xian1sheng5 (“mister”) has an original or literal meaning of something like “previously born one” or “elder.” If this is correct, what does “sheng” mean in xue2sheng5 (“student”), something like “study novice/newborn”? What about the “sheng” in “yi1sheng1” (“doctor”)? Does this compound yield any literal meaning to a native or near native speaker? Lastly, what about “sheng1yi4” (“tendency to grow; life and vitality”) and “sheng1yi5” (“business; trade”)? Where do these meanings come from?

[Quest]

"sheng" has quite a few meanings. It could mean to be born, vital/lively, or it could be a personal noun ending.

sheng in:

xiansheng means born first(before me)

xuesheng means study-person.

yisheng means medical-person

I dont know what you mean by "sheng1yi4 and sheng1yi5", but in the case of 生意, I would guess the original meaning to be "livelihood"?

[beirne]

I asked my Chinese teacher, whose native language is Fujianese and second language Mandarin, how she interprets the sheng nouns you listed. She said she doesn't really think about the literal meaning at all. They are just words for professor, student, doctor. I would imagine this is like English speakers don't think about one who professes, one who studies, one who teaches (the etymological meaning of doctor).

[Altair]

Quest, thanks for the reply. If 生 can person, do you think it adds some sort of particular connotation? It would seem strange that a language would have a word meaning "person" with such a restricted usage.

As for 生意, when I looked it up on my dictionary, I found two entries: one where 意 had a full tone (Yi4) and one where 意 had a light tone (Yi5). Is it better to indicate light tones as Yi or Yi0?

I forgot also to ask about 生員 vs. 學員. 生員 is one of the titles that were given to people passing the local civil service exams (課舉?). I see both translated as "student," although most of my dictionaries do not have an entry for 生員. Does the 生 in the first compound sound like a contraction of 學生, or something else? Does 生員 really sound like a title I should be willing to sacrifice my life trying to obtain? Does it at least carry some weight, such as "scholar"?

[beirne]

Wenlin includes "pupil; student; scholar" as one of it's definitions for 生. It also gives "suf. used in names of occupations". Overall Wenlin lists 18 different meaning for 生, and that is counting entries like "pupil; student; scholar" as one.

[skylee]

It is 科舉, not 課舉.

According to 現代漢語詞典, "生員" means "明清兩代稱通過最低一級考試得以在府、縣學讀書的人, 生員有應鄉試的資格. 通稱秀才." (In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, people who had passed the lowest level civil service examination were called "sheng yuan". They were eligible to study at institutes set up by local governments and to take a higher level examination held locally. They were commonly called "xiu cai".)

Does 生員 really sound like a title I should be willing to sacrifice my life trying to obtain? Does it at least carry some weight, such as "scholar"?

That would be 狀元, 榜眼, 探花, 翰林, 大學士, etc (do note that these are all obsolete titles).

According to the same dictionary, "sheng1 yi" (I hate tone 5) means business, "sheng1 yi4" means liveliness.

[shibo77]

一生,毕生 one life, whole life

Occupation is a stable thing in the past. Once one ends up with an occupation, one would remain in that occupation for the rest of one's life.

I think this is the connotation meant here. As "way of life".

学生 "Studying way-of-life" student

医生 "Healing way-of-life" doctor

It is like the question "What do you do for a living?"

-Shibo

[Altair]

According to the same dictionary, "sheng1 yi" (I hate tone 5) means business, "sheng1 yi4" means liveliness.

Now that I see this, I would guess that 生意 first meant something like "lively notion" and then "liveliness." From there, maybe it added the meaning "bustling activity." From there, "business" makes a lot of sense. Now that I think about it, the derivation of the English word "business" is not too different.

Occupation is a stable thing in the past. Once one ends up with an occupation, one would remain in that occupation for the rest of one's life.

I think this is the connotation meant here. As "way of life".

学生 "Studying way-of-life" student

医生 "Healing way-of-life" doctor

Shibo, this is brilliant! At least it makes a lot of sense to me. It always seemed strange to me that 生 would be used to mean "person," but this connection would seem to explain it. Thanks for the suggestion.