[Xmca-l] Re: Vowels Are From Venus

[Ivan Uemlianin]

Without referring to vowels, how would one describe the phonological difference in Mandarin between 慢 and 焖?

Ivan

--
festina lente


> On 29 Oct 2017, at 20:59, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Chinese phonologists didn't use romanization until the 1950s (and even then
> it was mostly . Even in old rhyming dictionaries, the main unit of analysis
> is the morpho-syllable (i.e. the written character, but spoken). The
> dictionaries are conscious of an onset and a rhyme, but not a vowel or a
> consonant. You can see that the "rhyme" (that is, the "tail" of the
> syllable) is always either a vowel or a nasal, but not a stop. Vowels and
> consonants don't explain this (and they don't explain tones either), so
> it's hardly surprising that Chinese phonologists were not interested in
> them..
> 
> Now, suppose we consider Chinese as the OPPOSITE of English. English puts
> articulation (vowels and consonants) at the centre of its phonological
> description and considers prosoday (intonation and stress) to be
> peripheral, but Chinese is the other way around. We can easily descibe
> every syllable in Chinese as a set of half a dozen prosodic features:
> initial posture, final posture, voice onset, aperture (open or closed), and
> of course tone. This is a much better description, and it doesn't use
> vowels or consonants.
> 
> I think that "chengyu" doesn't really capture the literary flavor very
> well, and that was what I wanted to say when I compared them to
> antithetical couplets. By introducing them in pairs, James is introducing
> two important semantic features of Chinese which are lost on
> non-Sinophones, and which are essential to understanding the specific
> dialectics of Chinese: the four-syllable line, which is of great antiquity,
> and the tendency to produce couplets. I always thought that "chengyu" are
> more prosaic, more like proverbs. But Ivan, as usual, knows better!
> 
> David Kellogg
> 
>> On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 7:00 PM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> In Chinese grammatical terms, the first one 炉火纯青 is the "subject-predicate"
>> type, for example, 刚柔相济 masculinity and femininity are complementary to
>> each other; the second one 出神入化 the "symmetric relation" type, for example,
>> 字正腔园 (of vocal performance) clear articulation of the lyrics and perfect
>> execution of the tone.
>> 
>> James
>> 
>> On 29 October 2017 at 09:10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk
>>> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Thanks David,
>>> 
>>> I am always fascinated by insights into how language is used in different
>>> ways to nuance and shade meanings.
>>> 
>>> Can you explain how these couplets are 'antithetical'? The second one
>>> clearly juxtaposes merging and emerging but I was intrigued by how the
>>> furnace burning with a pure green hue is seen as an antithesis.
>>> 
>>> All the best,
>>> 
>>> Rod
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
>>> mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
>>> Sent: 29 October 2017 00:28
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Vowels Are From Venus
>>> 
>>> You notice that James gives us two antithetical couplets, each of four
>>> syllables (Chinese, like child protolanguage, doesn't differentiate
>> vowels
>>> and consonants).
>>> 
>>> 炉火纯青
>>> 出神入化
>>> 
>>> Lú huǒ chún qīng  (the fire of the furnace burns a pure green hue) Chū
>>> shén rù huà (The god emerges and merges, comes out and goes in)
>>> 
>>> I haven't actually rendered the feeling that a Chinese person feels on
>>> hearing these expressions, any more than the words "consummate" or
>> "superb"
>>> communicate the thought.
>>> 
>>> For one thing, my translation is too labored and literal; a a Chinese
>>> person doesn't analyze so literally and the imagery is largley
>>> "automatized" rather than visualized.
>>> For another, the four character line has a history that goes all the way
>>> back to the Book of Songs (11th C BCE) and all the way up to the
>>> antithetical couplets peasants put on their doorways as Spring Festival
>> in
>>> the the countryside
>>> 
>>> (But James is right: the idea of antithetical couplets is a kind of
>>> natural dialectic built into the Chinese language.
>>> Somedays, like today, I find it that it influences the way I write in
>>> English.)
>>> 
>>> David Kellogg
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 6:21 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I often find it interesting to read David’s words, good and catalytic
>>>> to me.
>>>> 
>>>> I’ve been working on the Peirce-Vygotsky project and Peirce’s idea of
>>>> final logical interpretant which I take to be a qualitative
>>>> transformation, perhaps equivalent to “a dialectical leap”. To me,
>>>> this transformation is not only attributable to an accrued
>>>> quantitative change but also bears itself the heritage of all the
>>>> earlier qualitative changes. So, the resultant final logical
>>>> interpretant encapsulates both qualitative and quantitative changes.
>>>> 
>>>> By the way, on the face of it, “a dialectical leap” is a more
>>>> congenial and customary concept to most Chinese people (from Mainland)
>>>> due to historical reasons.
>>>> 
>>>> In a stage drama, I agree with David that an actor’s privileged access
>>>> is a real problem for him. This privileged access will have to be
>>>> calibrated or attuned to a dialectical leap in such a way that the
>>>> actor needs to make a choice from the plenitude of signs that are
>>>> constantly on the move both consciously and subliminally. However, in
>>>> the case of Peking opera, a dialectical leap is far more complex since
>>>> there is more to it. The actor is involved in an organic combination
>>>> of vocal performance, acrobatics and dance etc. Perhaps, dialectical
>>>> leap is not quite a right word to reflect what is perceived as the
>>>> essence of Peking opera: 炉火纯青 consummate, and 出神入化
>>>> superb.
>>>> 
>>>> James
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> *James Ma*  *https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa
>>>> <https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa>   *
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 28 October 2017 at 00:26, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I've always been restless with the idea that language is a
>>>> self-organizing
>>>>> system, or that it has a "fractal" structure in the sense of the
>>>>> "self-similarity" we find in a fern leaf--the same structure at
>>>>> every level. I suppose my impatience is ideological: I believe
>>>>> language organization is semantically driven (and semantic structure
>>>>> is a realization/transformation of some of the structures found in
>>> contexts).
>>>> So
>>>>> I don't think that vowels and consonants organize themselves into
>>>> syllables
>>>>> without human intentions, nor do I think that syllables will form
>>>>> words unless somebody makes them do it. As for grammar, it seems to
>>>>> me that to expect that even the very limited grammar found in this
>>>>> paragraph you are reading should somehow be "thrown up" by the words
>>>>> I am using and their elective affinities is a little like expecting
>>>>> medieval cathedrals to be thrown up by the mutual attraction of the
>>> stones that compose them.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes, I know. Consonants are what happen in the absence of vowels (at
>>>>> the ends of vowel phrases). Vowels are what happen at the ends of
>>> consonants.
>>>>> As soon as you have breath, vocal cord vibration, and a beginning
>>>>> and an end to it, you have the primitive structure (Optional
>>>>> Consonant)
>>>> Mandatory
>>>>> Vowel (Optioinal Consonant), and from this we can derive all the
>>>>> possible syllable structures of any language. You can do the same
>>>>> trick at any
>>>> level
>>>>> of language: If you have a morpheme like "work" or "play" you can
>>>>> add a bound morpheme to either end ("re~" and/or "~ed"),and if you
>>>>> have a
>>>> clause
>>>>> like "Work!" you can add a bound clause to either end ("If you are
>>>>> so willing~" and/or "so as to enrich yourselves!") and the existence
>>>>> of xmca itself shows how this principle works on units above the
>>>>> clause--Mike's last post is not really intelligible without my
>>>>> preceding one, and mine
>>>> is
>>>>> not really intelligible without James's, etc.
>>>>> 
>>>>> But I'm not talking about the various forms of language, potential
>>>>> and real; these are of course the affordances of the stuff of which
>>>>> language
>>>> is
>>>>> made, just as the limits of what you can do on a canvas has
>>>>> something to
>>>> do
>>>>> with the consistency of the paint. I'm talking about what people
>>>>> actually do and not just what they may or might do. So for example
>>>>> when we look at "To be or not to be" or at the speeches we find in
>>>>> "Shajiabang" or even,
>>>> as
>>>>> Mike suggests, at the language of everyday life, we find that vowels
>>>>> tend to carry the feeling of what we say (that's why they are
>>>>> elongated in tonics and why they are directed in tonality).
>>>>> Consonants, on the
>>>> other
>>>>> hand, work better for the nuances of thinking. That's why we sing
>>>>> the vowels, but spell with consonants; why Ophelia says "Oh what a
>>>>> noble mind is here o'erthrone!" but Hamlet says "Nymph, in thy
>>>>> orisons be all my
>>>> sins
>>>>> remembered!". And so once again we find that feeling and thinking
>>>>> are
>>>> both
>>>>> linked and distinct, to say the which is surely to say no more and
>>>>> no
>>>> less
>>>>> than to say that they are joined/separated by a dialectical leap.
>>>>> 
>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>> 
>>>> 
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