Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!calmasd!wlp
From: wlp@calmasd.Prime.COM (Walter Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: What to know & universal icons
Message-ID: <594@calmasd.Prime.COM>
Date: 21 Sep 89 14:38:49 GMT
References: <768@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <3490@rtech.rtech.com> <10742@dasys1.UUCP>
Distribution: comp.cog-eng
Organization: Prime - San Diego R&D (Object and Data Management Group)
Lines: 35

In article <10742@dasys1.UUCP>, rpb@dasys1.UUCP (Robert Brady) writes:
> 
> 	Isn't Chinese made up of 100 and some odd building blocks? The interactions between these would be in some sort of system.  
> 


Chinese characters are indexed in character dictionaries by what are
called "radicals", sequences of strokes (frequently characters in
their own right) that make up other, more complex characters.  The
most common system for defining and ordering radicals has 214 index
radicals. The remaining part of a complex character, called the
"phonetic" since it give a clue (and clue only!) to the character's
pronounciation, are not quite so regular.  The phonetic portion may be
composed of many strokes, some of which may be radicals, other
characters or just strokes that convey no particular 'stand-alone'
meaning.

Learing the radicals is the first step to learning Chinese characters,
but that alone is not sufficient.  For example, the character for
"river" is indexed by the radical for "water" and its phonetic part is
the character for "work" (which is itself a radical, but in this case
not the index radical).  Now it may seem logical that a river is
"water that does work", but that concept of working water can be
mapped onto many other things; waterfalls, waves, rapids, etc.
Many characters (probably most) don't have nice, logical explainations
like "river".  In any case, any "meaning" that the "system" of
characters may have is one that is imposed from outside the system by
the human observer and not contained in any systematic formation
rules.



-- 
Walt Peterson.  Prime - San Diego R&D (Object and Data Management Group)
"The opinions expressed here are my own."