方纔 vs.剛才

[Mark Yong]

I was browsing through some entries in my copy of Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary, and came across this character: 纔 'cai2'. According to the entry, it is the full form for the character 才 as used in the modern Mandarin 剛才, 才是, etc., and that 才 is only a 假借 borrowed abbreviation for 纔.

I counter-checked this with my copy of the 辭源 Ci Yuan dictionary. The entry defines 纔 as "僅也如言方纔". Edwin G. Pulleyblank's "Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar" (pg. 121) states that 方 is the Classical Chinese equivalent of the modern Mandarin 剛才.

Questions:

1. Based on the above, can someone confirm that the 才 in 剛才 is the contracted form for 纔?
   
2. Does it mean that the modern Mandarin 剛才 is a corrupted form of 方纔? The entry for the character 剛 in 康熙字典 does not define it as 僅也 or anything along the lines of "just now", so I am guessing that it was a usage peculiar to the Northern dialects (prior to the advent of modern Mandarin), and/or that it was a gradual corruption of the initial f- (as in 方) to g- (as in 剛).
   

As you can see from my constant references to "modern Mandarin", I am a fervent supporter of 文言 wenyan!

[zhwj]

Baxter says 方 is MC pjang, 刚 is MC kang.

刚刚 as 方才 is attested in Yuan Dynasty drama (see here)

Another dictionary cites a use of 刚 as 方才 in Tang poetry, and then there's Su Dongpo in the Song:

花影

苏轼

重重叠叠上瑶台，几度呼童扫不开。

刚被太阳收拾去，却教明月送将来。

But all of this probably tends more toward the colloquial usage of the day.

[shibo77]

纔cái, adverb:

1. (of time) 刚才、刚刚

2. (of quantity, of degree) 只、仅仅

3. (of circumstance) 要、必须、只有、因为、由于、为了

4. (for emphases) 很、特别

5. (for assumptions) 一、但

纔cái's original definition was "方始、仅仅". For the above 5 definitions of the character "纔", "才" could replace "纔" as a 通假字. Eventually "才" was used much more than 纔 for the above definitions. The adverb "方才" is an emphasised replacement for the adverb "才", it has the same meaning as "刚" (both were used in Classical Chinese, not a sound change). The noun "刚才" is more recent, maybe a corruption of the noun "方才".

[mandel1luke]

‘纔‘是‘才‘的异体字，通用于台湾。简体字简化为‘才‘

纔 is traditional variant for 才 when used as a grammatical particle

[Mark Yong]

Hi, mandel1luke,

Interesting that 纔 is considered as the 異體字 for 才, since historically, 才 is 纔 in simplified form - technically then, 纔 should be the 正體字 and 才 should be the 簡體字 or 異體字. Going by this logic, it seems to suggest that in future, all the 繁體字 versions of characters will be considered as 異體字

[mandel1luke]

Hi. In the PRC, 簡體字 almost always select the simplier 異體 as the standardized form. In Taiwan they are very conservative about character form, to them it's not a matter of 繁不繁体， but 正不正体。

They call it 正體字, the correct form, not 繁体字.

[mandel1luke]

方才 is not a corruption of 剛才, they are two different words with similar meaning and function.

‘方才’好像是江南（南京？）地区官话的词汇，‘刚才’是北方方言的词汇。由于北京官话后来较强势，‘方才’现在已经很少用了。