The logic behind "but" / "可是"

[Christa]

Anyone have any thoughts about this?

 

Chinese is often very logical and various components are put together to create new meanings, which often make sense when you think about them. This, I feel, is particularly true for the high frequency / core words of the language.

 

How then does 可是 make sense for "but"? Wouldn't a literal translation be "can be"? So how does that make sense for "but"?

 

I know it's a weird question but anyone have any thoughts?

 

Christina

[lips]

One of the (many) meanings of 可 is "but".  No logic required for 可是。

[davoosh]

It sounds like what are you really asking is the etymology of the word. As lips mentions, it has probably had this meaning for a long time, however the evolution of 'can/could be' into 'but' is quite easy to imagine. If we think that 'but' introduces a concession of some sort:

 

It is good, (it can also be)=(but) I don't like it

 

We can see how the word might have acquired this meaning. Or it could have just had this meaning all along.  Welcome to the wonderful world of etymology and grammaticalisation.

[gwr71]

The answer remains in my opinion one of linguistics.  You may have to check Chinese Grammer books for the reason why it is so.

The book that I use states that many compounds whether nominal (nouns ) or verbal (more than one verbs) or adjectival etc may either have some semantic relationship between the two constituents of the compound, it may also be that the semantic relationship has been lost or forgotten over time. Also there may be no apparent semantic connection between the meaning of the compound and the meaning of its constituents in modern mandarin.  such compounds exhibits the highest degree of idiomaticity.   Very few compounds in mandarin , however are of this type eg. xiao-shuo 'small-talk' = novel.; xin-shui 'feul-water'=salary and the ever favourite,  da-bian ' great-convenience'= defecate/feces.

In this case ke shi . I can look at it as two verbs Ke  and shi ( exists). why they are used a conjunction to mean but or however I have not found out as yet but I will keep reading my grammer book to find something to answer your question.  But for now , the reason may have been lost in time.  Maybe someone who studied Chinese language from a linguistic point of view can be of further help.

[Christa]

Thanks all of you. These are some really interesting answers. Davoosh, I also thought something perhaps along those lines. gwr71, yes, please update this thread if you discover anything.

[evn108]

Not that this is an exhaustive resource, but 漢語大詞典 gives uses of 可 to indicate ‘轉折’ (shift or transition) synonymous with 卻 or 但 in classical Chinese texts from the Yuan dynasty

 

It also lists 可是 being used as synonymous with 但是 in modern texts, and with 卻是 in somewhat earlier ones, I have to admit I'm not really able to distinguish between 但是 and 卻是 to get this subtlety.

 

But in addition to the usual meaning of "to permit or approve" (basically) 可 is used frequently in classical texts to mean something like "perhaps," "could it be that...?" etc., (like 豈, 難道, etc.). Earlier appearances of 可是 usually have this type of connotation. I assume the two connotations are related somehow, from the connection between raising an alternative possibility and transitioning the sentence with a contrastive example. Just a thought, I guess.

[陳德聰]

I tend to see 'and' and 'but' as relatively equivalent logical connectors. I think I must have picked this idea up somewhere in my ling studies but I don't remember being explicitly taught it.

 

I also feel like there is more than one sense of "but", with at least one that introduces a contradiction, and one that introduces additional information (negated? Like an "and not", e.g. I like apples but I don't like oranges).