Concept of word in Chinese

[OneEye]

Thanks, guys. I was able to find both of those books at the library. Very interesting! A good bit of it is a bit beyond my level right now, but it was cool to see the charts with the different pronunciations.

I do have another question about a statement he makes, but I don't think I should make a new thread for it. Maybe this thread ought to be re-titled so that it fits, though.

In the chapter on grammar (Ch. 5), he makes this statement:

The Chinese have no every day word for 'word.' Instead, they think of their language as composed of individual syllables, which they call zì.

(snip)

If a Chinese wants to ask what the word jīguāng 'laser' means, he is likely to say, Jīguāng, zhèi liǎngge zì shì shénma yìsǐ? 'Jī and guāng, these two zì, what do they mean?' In very recent years young Chinese have also begun to use a term meaning 'word,' because PRC policymakers have decided that this modern concept should be introduced in the schools. But the word for 'word' that they chose, cí, was a technical linguistic term. It was not part of the average person's vocabulary any more than the term morpheme is in English-speaking countries.

Is this accurate? I know this book was published nearly 25 years ago, but this just seems odd to me. Surely the concept of 詞 was known to most Chinese earlier than this quote suggests? Can anyone shed some light on this?

[chrix]

Thread moved from here.

There's an older thread on this issue, but I think your question had a different thrust than the discussion five years ago.

[jiangping]

That's really interesting. Traditionally 詞(辭) was used to refer specifically to what are now called 虛詞 xūcí, "function words", but not 實詞 shící, "full words".

If you accept that Chinese used to be monosyllabic, then what he says makes some sense, with each 字 being a word. Nonetheless, it seems odd that this mindframe would have continued down until today, seeing as Chinese was already mostly disyllabic by about 200 AD.

[OneEye]

If you accept that Chinese used to be monosyllabic, then what he says makes some sense, with each 字 being a word. Nonetheless, it seems odd that this mindframe would have continued down until today, seeing as Chinese was already mostly disyllabic by about 200 AD.

Well, but considering that "the Chinese language" largely meant the written language (文言文) for most of its history, it may have been much more recent that people conceived of the language as something other than monosyllabic (I don't think disyllabic is the most accurate way of describing it, and neither is polysyllabic, but I don't have a better word). However, since 文言文 was replaced by 白話 as the standard since at least the '20s or so, I'd think that by 1986 (the publication year of Ramsey's book) the concept of 詞/辭 would have been firmly in place.

[chrix]

I think I would side with jiangping here, by the Han period, lots and lots of bisyllabic/disyllabic (what's wrong with "disyllabic"?) words started to appear, in 文言文.

But even 文言文 in the Classical period had some bisyllabic words, mostly loans though. Though here's a difference: these words would be bisyllabic, but monomorphemic, while those bisyllabic words that would start to appear later on would also be bimorphemic.

My biggest problem with the 詞 - 字 debate is that it inappropriately mixes two different linguistic levels, namely that of morphology and that of writing. From the perspective of modern linguistics it just doesn't make sense to say that a 詞 consists of so and so many 字, the better way of putting it would be to say 詞素, the Chinese term for "morpheme".

But it's not the highest priority in the Chinese education system to teach concepts of modern morphological theory, so it's no surprise that most people continue not to care about the issue (as Ramsey said in your quote, how many English speakers care about what a morpheme is?)

[OneEye]

I see. I guess I'm just still having a hard time with his statement that Chinese has "no every day word for 'word.'" Practical Chinese Reader, published by BLCUP in 1981 (five years before Ramsey's book) has a 生詞/"New Words" section in each chapter, and I don't think they assume any real knowledge of linguistics. Plus, seeing how it was written in China by Chinese speakers for Westerners, if 詞/辭 was a relatively new concept in the minds of most Chinese, it would have been an odd choice indeed to use that term. You don't see, to stay with our example, the word 'morpheme' in most textbooks for English-speaking learners of French or Spanish.

By the way, nothing wrong with saying a word is disyllabic, but describing a language as disyllabic makes it sound (to me) like all words in the language have two syllables. Of course I could be wrong.

[chrix]

Yeah it's a short-hand way of saying "a language whose words largely consist of two syllables", used in linguistic typology to contrast with monosyllabic, sesquisyllabic (1.5 syllables) and polysyllabic languages...

[Daan]

It depends partly on the speaker, in my experience. My previous teacher would always distinguish between 字 (characters used in writing) and 詞兒 (words), but my current teacher uses 字 for both. Which can sometimes lead to sentences such as 這是一個兩個字的字. I think most people without a background in linguistics would do the same.

[OneEye]

Yeah it's a short-hand way of saying "a language whose words largely consist of two syllables", used in linguistic typology to contrast with monosyllabic, sesquisyllabic (1.5 syllables) and polysyllabic languages...

I see. Hmm, maybe I should shut up and read some more before I form such opinions.

[tooironic]

I've always found this debate quite fascinating. Learners often complain about not always being able to decipher parts of speech in Chinese and that doing so is clumsily applying Western linguistic concepts to an Asian language, however I think word boundaries is even more of a conundrum. As a Wiktionary editor I'm always asking myself "is this term considered a word?" and the answer is rarely straight-forward. Luckily I very rarely edit 文言文 entries.

[anonymoose]

I think the notion of 词 is not very useful in Chinese, and that's probably why it is not widely recognised.

The reason I say the notion is not useful, is that dividing a sentence into words is often arbitrary and serves little purpose. Whilst Chinese may not be a monosyllabic language in the strict sense, the fact remains that most "words" can still be broken up into 字 with identifiable meaning.

One often-quoted example to demonstrate that Chinese is not a monosyllabic language is the "word" 蝴蝶 (húdié), meaning butterfly, where the two characters supposedly have no independent meaning. But, in fact, this is contradicted by actual usage, the Chinese word for "monarch butterfly" 王蝶 being one example. Here, 王 retains its original meaning of "monarch", and 蝶 on its own distinguishes this as a butterfly. So, clearly, 蝶 does have an independent meaning. Going back to the notion of 词, would 王蝶 consist of one 词 or two 词s? That question is tricky to answer, and ultimately, rather pointless. On the other hand, breaking 王蝶 into its constituent 字 is unambiguous and quite straightforward.

In many languages, the idea of the "word" is very deeply ingrained. After all, everything we say and write is composed of clearly identifiable words separated by spaces. But what is the actual importance of a word? Surely if it carries some fundamental significance, then you would expect more consistency across languages. But take "shoe factory manager" as an example. In English, this clearly consists of three words. But what about German then? "Schuhfabrikleiter", containing analogous semantic components as English, comes out as one word. In Chinese, this would be 鞋厂长. Should this be considered as one "word" as per German, or three words as per English? Do either of these options have any particular significance? If we consider 字 instead, as before, there is no such ambiguity.

[chrix]

Learners often complain about not always being able to decipher parts of speech in Chinese and that doing so is clumsily applying Western linguistic concepts to an Asian language

Well these unnamed learners are mistaken, modern linguistics has evolved greatly beyond its Eurocentric origins, it has developed concepts that can be applied to any human language, and Chinese is no exception. I'm talking about the two concepts of word and morpheme here (especially anoynymoose seems to confuse those two a lot), which can be rendered into Chinese as 詞 and 詞素.

Now where Chinese is quite different is in its writing-system (which is the most "artificial" part of language anyway), and so it is true that because there are no spaces in Chinese writing, accordingly one can say there is no graphemic word in Chinese. But the existence of the graphemic word in other languages (say English or German) masks the fact that even with those languages, the graphemic word plays no role in morphology. Spaces belong to the sphere of writing and should not be mixed up with morphology, no more than 字 should be mixed up with 詞.

It is true that the existence of the graphemic word has led to the notion of word being ingrained in the mind of the English or German speaker, but still, wordhood is usually established on phonological, morphological and syntactic grounds, and for Chinese this works just as well - just as badly, because if you take a closer look at the wordhood debate, it becomes apparent that even for English or German there are many controversial cases specialists will quarrel over. So it's a fallacy to assume that the concept of word is clear in English and unclear in Chinese.

One often-quoted example to demonstrate that Chinese is not a monosyllabic language is the "word" 蝴蝶 (húdié), meaning butterfly, where the two characters supposedly have no independent meaning.

I'd like to see a source for that. 蝴 is a new character, it used to be 胡 (yet another reason for not taking characters as morphological evidence). So where's the problem? Two morphemes (詞素), one word (詞).

You seem to be confusing morpheme and word here. "monosyllabic language" can mean at least two different things:

- a language with monosyllabic words: this was the case for Classical Chinese, and started to change after the Han era, culminating in the present state of Mandarin vocabulary with its large number of bisyllabic-bimorphemic words. 蝴蝶 doesn't prove much here.

- a language with monosyllabic morphemes: now this is overwhelmingly true for Classical Chinese as well as Modern Mandarin. Usually words like 蝴蝶 are presented as counterevidence inasmuch that they are said to consisting of one bisyllabic morpheme. Now while I believe 蝴蝶 might not be the best examples, typically early loans into Archaic Chinese are indeed bisyllabic morphemes, a better example perhaps being 蜘蛛...

But, in fact, this is contradicted by actual usage, the Chinese word for "monarch butterfly" 王蝶 being one example. Here, 王 retains its original meaning of "monarch", and 蝶 on its own distinguishes this as a butterfly. So, clearly, 蝶 does have an independent meaning. Going back to the notion of 词, would 王蝶 consist of one 词 or two 词s? That question is tricky to answer, and ultimately, rather pointless. On the other hand, breaking 王蝶 into its constituent 字 is unambiguous and quite straightforward.

That question is not hard to answer at all: Two morphemes (詞素), one word (詞)

In many languages, the idea of the "word" is very deeply ingrained. After all, everything we say and write is composed of clearly identifiable words separated by spaces. But what is the actual importance of a word? Surely if it carries some fundamental significance, then you would expect more consistency across languages. But take "shoe factory manager" as an example. In English, this clearly consists of three words. But what about German then? "Schuhfabrikleiter", containing analogous semantic components as English, comes out as one word. In Chinese, this would be 鞋厂长. Should this be considered as one "word" as per German, or three words as per English? Do either of these options have any particular significance? If we consider 字 instead, as before, there is no such ambiguity.

Again you're confusing morphemes with words, and taking the writing as main evidence. In all three languages, we're talking about one word consisting of three morphemes (now some people might disagree about the English example, so it might be one of the controversial cases, but it most assuredly is wrong to say that "this clearly consists of three words".

Now, language users, particularly native speakers, don't have to deal with morphological theory to speak the language, so all of this might not have much significance in daily life, but it is just nonsense to claim that these concepts somehow don't work for Chinese...

[anonymoose]

I'm affraid, Chrix, you've really misunderstood the whole point of my post. What I was trying to demonstrate is why 词 is not a useful, and hence, not widely recognised concept to many Chinese people, in response to the question in the original post.

Most users of Chinese are not linguists, and are unaware of the technical aspects of language, such as morphemes and words. On the other hand, the notion of the 字 is very intuitive in Chinese.

[tooironic]

Interesting analysis chrix. Since I have never studied linguistics in the pure sense (but rather the theoretical underpinnings of translation studies), I'll have to trust your argument. However regardless of whether modern linguistics has actually moved beyond its Eurocentric beginnings (I'd like to see some evidence for this just out of devil's advocate curiousity), it does not make deciphering word boundaries any easier for the average language learner. I think you're right though that just because a language has spaces in its writing system does not automatically make word boundaries a simple and straight-forward thing. I'd love to see some more examples of not just words out of context but how our analysis of their boundaries affects the way we comprehend texts and, perhaps, (gasp!), even translate them.

[chrix]

I don't think I've misunderstood you. I've tried to show you that your intuitive concept of 字 will lead you nowhere in terms of linguistic analysis.

That's also what I understood the OP to mean. That native speakers find 字 intuitive was never in doubt.

Let's just leave it at that.

@tooironic:

- regarding Eurocentrism: check out works on "Standard Average European".

- regarding word boundaries: the first question would be: would it really matter for the learner to establish word boundaries? I personally think it would be beneficial for learners if they had an understanding of linguistics, but this is certainly not a necessity. (I didn't go into detail what establishing word boundaries would entail, but it would be a whole battery of tests, on the level of intonation and phonology, morphology and syntax).

- analysis of boudaries: a famous example might be "black bird" vs. "blackbird". Native speakers will process these differences effortlessly and unconsciously, that's the same for any language.

[anonymoose]

I don't think I've misunderstood you. I've tried to show you that your intuitive concept of 字 will lead you nowhere in terms of linguistic analysis.

As I said, the thrust of my post was to demonstrate why, to many Chinese speakers, 词 is not a relevant concept. I was using 字 as a contrast, not appraising it as a concept for linguistic analysis.

That's also what I understood the OP to mean. That native speakers find 字 intuitive was never in doubt.

It looks like the original post has been broken off from a previous discussion. I'm not sure what was said in the previous discussion, but if you go back and read the first post in this thread, you'll find the OP was asking about 词, not 字.

[chrix]

As I said, the thrust of my post was to demonstrate why, to many Chinese speakers, 词 is not a relevant concept. I was using 字 as a contrast, not appraising it as a concept for linguistic analysis.

Usually in the cí debate, the contrast to zì is implied. Be that as it may, cí remains a relevant concept for Chinese, even if speakers are not aware of it. Native speakers usually aren't linguists and don't have to be. But I fail to see how the psycholinguistic attitude of Chinese speakers towards cí would be proven by morphological evidence (like your 蝴蝶 example). For that you would need to do experiments involving human subjects.

It looks like the original post has been broken off from a previous discussion. I'm not sure what was said in the previous discussion, but if you go back and read the first post in this thread, you'll find the OP was asking about 词, not 字.

My bad, I should have left a link to the original thread, which had nothing to do with the concept of cí or zì.

Yes, he was asking about the concept of cí, but have look at the Ramsey quote, as I see it the contrast to zì is implied

[chrix]

I think it was on the OP's reading list, but a good book for this debate would also be:

John DeFrancis: Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

[anonymoose]

I fail to see how the psycholinguistic attitude of Chinese speakers towards cí would be proven by morphological evidence (like your 蝴蝶 example). For that you would need to do experiments involving human subjects.

OK, let me try to explain this again. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that, to most Chinese people (not linguists), 词 is not an important concept. You yourself said that 蝴蝶 is one 词. OK, fine. Now how is that relevant to the average user of Chinese? What is of more relevance is that 蝴蝶 can be further broken down into 字, and used individually in formations such as 王蝶.

If you want to consider "pshycholinguistic attitudes", then you're right, you need to do experiments involving human subjects. However, all I'm trying to do is shed some light on why the concept of 词 is relatively unknown to most Chinese people, as per the question posed by the OP.

[chrix]

You keep claiming things about what's relevant to speakers without providing sufficient evidence (your 蝴蝶 example doesn't count).

OK, let me try to explain this again. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that, to most Chinese people (not linguists), 词 is not an important concept. You yourself said that 蝴蝶 is one 词. OK, fine. Now how is that relevant to the average user of Chinese? What is of more relevance is that 蝴蝶 can be further broken down into 字, and used individually in formations such as 王蝶.

Well, there's one area where 词 are important for Chinese speakers: dictionaries. The dictionary will not have random combinations of 字 (better: 词素), only those combinations of 字 which make up 词, so a dictionary user must have at least some idea about of a 词 is.

(Oh, also one more thing about "broken down into 字": for many native speakers 蝴蝶 would be a be a 字 that can be broken down into two 字.)

If you want to consider "pshycholinguistic attitudes", then you're right, you need to do experiments involving human subjects. However, all I'm trying to do is shed some light on why the concept of 词 is relatively unknown to most Chinese people, as per the question posed by the OP.

Well, WHY is a different question altogether, and here we would even agree, even though I think we might express it differently: the concept of 词 is relatively unknown as it hasn't been taught that thoroughly in school, and also because many native speakers are used to a confused concept of 字.