余年

[Pedroski]

I have come across 余年 or 余生 before. As far as I can tell, they always refer to the future，like: 她在维也纳度过了余生/余年.

 

If you think of 余年 as a time vector, it has a direction forward or positive.

 

So then I had this in a sentence: 娃哈哈连续十余年领跑中国饮料行业，

 

If I add 十 to 余年， the time vector reverses its polarity, and refers to the past. I find this very interesting and strange.

 

Question: Can 余年 ever be used to refer to the past without a number?

 

[skylee]

Consider -

十餘年 = 十餘 + 年

十餘年 ≠ 十 + 餘年

[陳德聰]

I don't think you understand what 餘生 means.

 

If you think of 余年 as a time vector, it has a direction forward or positive.

This is nonsensical. Obviously 餘 implies positive rather than "negative" years, but it doesn't say anything about direction.

 

她度過了餘生 <- she spent the rest of her life there

Where is this future you're talking about? It's in the past just like your second example.

[ZhangJiang]

余 basically means remaining. 余生/余年 is one's remaining life/years, and 十余年/十余个 is ten years/ones with remaining (several years/ones), which is only used with "full" tens of numbers where the sense of remaining holds.

[Lianbu Zhou]

十余年 = More than 10 years = 十多年

 

numbers + 余年 = more than XX years 

 

for example: 二十余年 = More than 20 years

 

According to the meaning of 余： It means "The rest part of something"

 

余生= 余+生 = Rest of someone's life

 

余年= 余+年 = Rest of someone's years

[roddy]

"If you think of 余年 as a time vector, it has a direction forward or positive."

And if you look it up in a dictionary, you'll see what it actually means. 

[Pedroski]

Thank you for reminding me to look things up in a dictionary. I had entirely forgotten that! http://www.zdic.net/c/9/156/342784.htm

 

Personally, I think 'remaining years' are 'future years', years that have not happened yet. Maybe, in Chinese, where many things are possible, 'remaining years' can, by some logic, refer to 'past years'.

 

By which particular logic does one arrive at：

 

十餘年 = 十餘 + 年
十餘年 ≠ 十 + 餘年

 

Maybe:

1. Deduct 余 from 年

2. Equate 余 = 多

3. Prefix 十

 

娃哈哈连续十多年领跑中国饮料行业，

 

What interests me is these kinds of semantic shifts. If you just speak Chinese, you probably don't even think about it.

[imron]

By which particular logic does one arrive at：

Basic Chinese grammar, and the same logic that 十几年 is 十几   年 and not 十   几年  

 

Besides, 'remaining years' refers to a set of years from some point until you die.  Logically, you can't have ten sets of them unless you have 10 lives with which to live them and even then I can't imagine a sentence talking about 10 sets of 'remaining years' that doesn't sound awkward.

 

 

 

Maybe, in Chinese, where many things are possible, 'remaining years' can, by some logic, refer to 'past years'.

Just like in English. e.g. After his retirement, world renowned Sinologist Pedroski spent his remaining years doing crossword puzzles and pottering about in his garden until his untimely death in a boating accident.

[陳德聰]

I think your faculty for language in general could use some work.

 

In what universe is "remaining years" limited to the future? There is literally no finite time reference in that utterance at all.

 

if Reference Date = 1995

and Death Date = 2014

and Date at which we are discussing this person = now

then the entirety of this fictitious person's "remaining years" played out in dun dun dun THE PAST.

 

if Reference Date = 2015

and Death Date = uncertain, obligatorily in the future

and Date at which we are discussing this person = now

then the entirety of this fictitious person's "remaining years" WILL play out in dun dun dun THE FUTURE.

 

It's not "Chinese logic", it's actually just logic.

[OneEye]

Are you guys actually suggesting that we go by logic, looking things up, and trying to understand how the language actually works rather than coming up with wild, baseless conjectures?

 

Pedroski, don't listen to them.

[陳德聰]

What interests me is these kinds of semantic shifts.

Not to beat a dead horse but what on earth are you talking about?

[anonymoose]

I find this thread very interesting.

I'm not a native Chinese speaker, so I may be wrong here, but it seems Pedroski's confusion stems from incorrect parsing of the phrase, which Skylee essentially pointed out in her post, albeit without any explanation (- it is after all, to me anyway, self-explanatory).

Yet the focus of the argument seems to be on the function of 余年 which is not relevant to the original question posed, since in Pedroski's sentence, 余 should be coupled with 十 to mean "more than ten", and not with 年.

So has this evolved into a separate argument about the meaning of 余年/余生, or what? No one has said explicitly. Otherwise it seems like many people, even native speakers, have interpreted the sentence in the same (erroneous?) way as Pedroski. I don't get it...

[陳德聰]

Huh?

 

Pedroski gave two sentences, one involving the word 余年/余生 and one involving 十余+年. Skylee explained the second one immediately. I was more concerned with the misconception re: the nature of 余年/余生 as being "in the future", especially since the other rather straight-forward question had already been answered.

[anonymoose]

OK. I wasn't sure.

I just think that pointing out Pedroski had incorrectly parsed the second sentence, and thus resolve the apparent contradiction he was seeing, would have immediately cleared up any misunderstanding.

[陳德聰]

Oh is that all it would have taken?

 

Question: Can 余年 ever be used to refer to the past without a number?

 

Somehow I doubt it.

[imron]

I just think that pointing out Pedroski had incorrectly parsed the second sentence, and thus resolve the apparent contradiction he was seeing, would have immediately cleared up any misunderstanding.

I see you've not read any of Pedroski's other threads then.

[Tiana]

This is how I understand Pedroski's question and the problem associated with it:

 

From the example sentence he gave in the OP, Pedroski seems to take 余年 not as a word in its own right but as a combination of 余+年 , hence he gave another "similar combination": 十+余+年.

It's a common mistake for us non-native to make, not knowing where the word's boundary is, but it's also easy for learners with an open mind to correct this with a little bit of investigation. But Pedroski's approach is, from his limited exposure to this word, to jump into the conclusion that when a number (e.g., 十) is added to 余+年, the meaning of the phrase magically points to the opposite direction with reference to time. This erroneous conception persists, in spite of skylee's helpful post. And this is what he meant by "semantic shift" in his subsequent post.

 

Asking questions with conclusions already made up instead of taking replies seriously seems to be a feature of Pedroski's questions, one which p... off ( ) not a few willing helpers.