RE: Human speech 350,000 years ago?

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Don Winterstein
Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2004 5:49 AM

>>>>Technical point: A quick scan through a Chinese dictionary reveals
that most Chinese words have more than one syllable. The sound
associated with each character is indeed only a single syllable, but
most words have more than one character. In many instances the meaning
of such multiple-character words is clear to someone who knows the
meanings of the individual characters, but in many other instances the
meanings are not so discernable. This is especially true of abstract or
scientific words.

In fact it's a really good thing that most words do have two or more
syllables; otherwise the spoken language would be hopelessly ambiguous.
My little dictionary has 57 distinct meanings for the sound /shi/,
ranging through "corpse," "louse," "poetry," "ten," "lion," "stone," "to
eat," "to be," etc., etc. Given there are only four tones, that's a lot
of potential ambiguity. There are many similar examples. To understand
the spoken language, you need to have a really good idea of context.
The use of multiple syllables greatly reduces but does not eliminate
ambiguity. The written language is much less ambiguous, because the
character is different for each meaning.

A Chinese woman once recited for me a fairly lengthy poem in which every
sound was the single syllable /shi/. She acknowledged that no one would
be able to understand it in its oral form.

The Chinese make much of the sounds of their words. Example: Few of
them will buy a house with the numeral 4 prominent in the street
address, because the sound /si/ for "4" is the same as the sound for
"death," even though the tones are different!

Don <<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I speak a wee bit of mandarin--enough to get buy in hotels, restaurants
and to tell a joke or two. One never gives a clock as a gift in Chinese
culture for the same reason--si is the word for clock as well. I call
Mandarin a 'plug and play' language. One uses measure words to tell the
listener what is mean. 'Ee shou ge' is a song but 'ee ge shou' is your
hand. Shou is the measure word for song (ge) and ge is the measure word
for shou (hand). Ee zhi mao is a cat but ee ding mao is a hat. So the
measure words seem to work as a second syllable to make meaning clearer.

As to the word shi, there is are poems in Mandarin, which go shi shi shi
shi shi shi... Which to the western ear sounds almost the same. They
are using different intonations to create the message. As to you
example of 'to eat' that should be chi, not shi.

 
Received on Sat Jul 3 10:58:16 2004