The Chinese Writing System (2)

DO CHARACTERS REPRESENT MONOSYLLABIC WORDS?

Characters are psychologically the most significant unit of the written language for Chinese speakers. Ordinary Chinese discuss or analyse their language in terms of characters ( zi⁴). Sentences effectively consist of unbroken strings of single-syllable characters, each having their own particular meanings. For this reason, Chinese is popularly regarded as a 'monosyllabic language' -- a language composed exclusively of single-syllable words.

While this perception was largely true for the Classical language, in the modern language the situation is not so simple.

Of course, there are many monosyllabic words in Chinese, just as there are in English. Some examples are:

Word	Pronunc.	Meaning		Word	Pronunc.	Meaning
	shan1	'mountain'			gou3	'dog'
	ren2	'person'			kuai1	'quick, fast'
	chi1	'to eat'			kan4	'to see'

But not every character can be regarded as a single word. There are huge number of words that consist of multiple syllables (polysyllabic words), mostly two syllables (disyllabic).

Polysyllabic words may be inherently polysyllabic, or they may be the result of combining two or more monosyllables.

1) Forms that are inherently polysyllabic

Inherently polysyllabic words cannot be split into smaller units. Some examples:

Pronunciation	Characters	Meaning		Pronunciation	Characters	Meaning
pu2tao2		'grape'		hu2tu		'muddled, confused, bewildered'
mei2gui4		'rose'		gan1ga4	*	'awkward, embarrased'
zhi1zhu1		'spider'		bo1li		'glass'

The individual syllables in these cases are meaningless on their own and always occur in tandem; there is no such thing as a zhu¹ or a tao², and no-one has ever been observed being * gan¹. Breaking these words up into multiple characters, as the writing system does, is akin to breaking the English word 'rabbit' into two words as 'rabb' and 'it'.

This creates a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy -- being written separately, each syllable has come to be regarded as an independent unit, regardles of its original status. (See Note: 'Self-fulfilling prophecy': How Chinese characters confer independent status on elements that were not originally independent).

2) Characters combining to make words:

Much more common is the case where two or more characters combine to make words. Sometimes this is simply a case of adding a suffix or prefix to a character. In others, meaningful characters go together to form 'compounds'.

Suffixes/Prefixes: Many words (mainly nouns) that stood alone in Classical Chinese now add a suffix, especially in the spoken language. Suffixes include -zi ('child'), * -tou ('head') and * -r ('son, child'), the latter common in Beijing speech. For instance:

Individual Characters	Word	Meaning
bi2 + zi3	bi2-zi	'nose'
zhuo1 + zi3	zhuo1-zi	'table'
mu4 + * tou2	* mu4-tou	'wood'

Often the suffix is obligatory. bi², for instance, cannot be used on its own as a word. There are also a few prefixes like lao³ 'old', e.g., lao³-hu³ 'tiger'.

In modern times Chinese has adopted prefixes and suffixes modelled on European languages, such as hua⁴ '-ise, -isation', as in * xian⁴-dai⁴-hua⁴ 'to modernise, modernisation'.

Compound words: In 'compound words', meaningful characters join together to form larger words.

Compound words are extensively used in Chinese. In everyday speech, a number of words that were originally monosyllabic have become disyllabic through this process, e.g., yue⁴-liang ('moon' + 'bright' = 'moon') and * yun²-cai ('cloud' + 'colour' = 'cloud' - informal language).

Historically, compound words were used to translate Indian Buddhist terminology (e.g., shi⁴-jie⁴ 'world') and to translate Western learning introduced by the Jesuits around the 17th century (e.g. * ji³-he²-xue² 'how many-what-study' = 'geometry'). They were given a huge boost when the Chinese started importing concepts of science and civilisation from the West in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many essential compounds like * she⁴-hui⁴ 'society' and * ke¹-xue² 'science' were created in this period. Below are some examples of compound words.

Word	Individual Meanings	Total Meaning
di4 + ban3	'ground + board'	'floor'
* chuang1-hu	window + opening/door'	'window'
pi2-xie2	'leather + shoes'	'leather shoes'
lu4-kou3	'road + mouth'	'intersection'
* tian1-qi4	'sky, day, weather + air, spirit, energy'	'weather'
* xing4-qu4	'mood, interest + interest, delight'	'interest'
ming2-bai2	'bright + white'	'to understand'
shen2-mi4	'god, divine, mysterious + secret'	'mysterious'
xin4-xi1	'news, information + news'	'information'
zheng4-fu3	'government, politics + govt. offices'	'government'
* zhu3-yi4	'master, principal + justice, significance'	'principle, -ism'
* fei1-zheng4-fu3-zhu3-yi4	'non + government + ism'	'anarchism'

* Put cursor on top to see Simplified character

Since many compounds are fairly transparent combinations of independent words, they give the impression that they are thrown together quite freely. Compounds are, in fact, integral units with their own independent existence, not simply convenient combinations created on the fly. Take the following examples, in which the meaning of the whole is somewhat more than the meaning of the parts.

Word	Individual Meanings	Total Meaning
qi4-you2	'gas + oil'	'petrol (gasoline)'
* xiao3-shuo2	'small + speak'	'novel'
* jing1-ji4	'govern + assist'	'economy'
*xiong2-mao1	bear + cat'	'panda'
* dong4-wu4	'to move + thing'	'animal' ('moving thing')

The following example, photographed at a metro station in Shanghai, illustrates how different ways of combining characters can produce radically different meanings.



Dan¹-cheng² piao² dang⁴-ri⁴ ben³-zhan⁴ you³-xiao⁴
Single tickets valid for the date (of issue) in this station
(Note: = traditional , = traditional )

The four characters in the middle form the two words dang⁴-ri⁴ ben³-zhan⁴ ('that-day this-station'). A different breakup would yield the (nonsensical) dang¹ Ri⁴-ben³ zhan⁴ 'as a Japanese station'.

In fact,many characters can never occur alone, always forming compounds with other characters, e.g., xi³ ('joy') and * huan¹ ('pleasure, welcome') are found together in the word * xi³-huan¹ ('to like'). Both characters only ever occur in combination with other characters, in words such as xi³-yue⁴ 'joy, pleasure'; * huan¹-ying² 'welcome', etc. They never occur by themselves as xi³ or * huan¹. Neither has the full independence and freedom of a word.

Perhaps most importantly, grammatical analysis is almost impossible if each character is treated as a single word. For instance, the sentence below is difficult to analyse for either grammar or meaning if each character is treated as a separate word. It has three verbs and the meaning looks like 'We polish and pursue this asking topic'.

Wo3	* men	yan2	jiu4	* zhe4	* ge4	* wen4	* ti2
I	plural	polish	pursue	this	(one piece)	ask	title/topic
Pronoun (Subject)	Plural Particle	Verb	Verb	Demonstrative	Classifier	Verb (?)	Noun (Object?)

In fact, the sentence is easily understood as a simple Subject Verb Object structure with 'we', 'study', and 'problem' handled as single words:

Wo3-men	yan2-jiu4	zhe4-ge	wen4-ti2
We	study/research	this	issue/problem
Pronoun (Subject)	Verb	(Demonstrative + Classifier)	Noun (Object)

* Put cursor on top to see Simplified character

Modern Chinese grammarians and linguists recognise the 'word' in Chinese, which they call a * ci². However, in some ways this new concept is simply laid on top of the older concept of characters ( zi⁴).

This is quite apparent in dictionaries. In pre-modern Chinese dictionaries, each character ( zi⁴) had its own entry. The entry would have an indication of pronunciation along with an explanation of the meaning/meanings. Each character was considered to have its own inherent meaning.

Modern Chinese dictionaries are still arranged in terms of characters. The major advance is that, in addition to information for the character as a whole, there is a list of * ci² (compound words) and longer combinations in which the character occurs. For example, the entry for the character * long² 'dragon' might look like this, in drastically simplified form:

The general meanings given for the character long² attempt to cover all its different meanings. This includes long² as an independent word and long² as the mere component of a word. Notice that one of the general meanings of long² is given as 'dinosaur'. This is slightly misleading: long² is indeed found in words like * kong³ long² ('terrible dragon' = 'dinosaur') and * yi⁴ shou³ long² ('wing hand dragon' = 'pterodactyl'). But dinosaurs by themselves are not referred to simply as long².

The listing of compound words starting with long² is a major advance over traditional dictionaries. In fact, it is absolutely essential because, as we have seen, the meaning of a compound is often not predictable from the constituent characters. For instance, it is not possible to tell that a * long²-gu³ or 'dragon bone' refers to the keel of a boat!

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For more information on the Chinese writing system, see Links. See also the Japanese Writing System and the Vietnamese Writing System.