on epistemology and etymology

saw the following quote in petraeus’s post:

“When confronted with two things that have an appearance of accuracy, most people will choose the one that is more appealing to them.”

and it totally resonated with an observation made 2 days ago. this story began with a casual flip of a ForwardSG booklet that was distributed free with the printed Zaobao. and the casual flip turned up an observation (looks like the casual mode did not disengage the analytical mind):

(click here for image (pwd))

there was a problematic expression. it should have been “取诸社会,用诸社会” (meaning: giving back to society what’s obtained from society).
but “诸” is a word from old Chinese and it’s seldom used and considered more difficult in contemporary Chinese today. however, the second of “诸”‘s multiple meanings in old Chinese can be represented by two simple words of today: “之于”。in other words, 诸 = 之于 (could be interpreted as: from). hence, if “诸” is difficult and not used, a more understandable and accurate expression would be “取之于社会,用之于社会”。but it is lengthy.

so why is “取之社会,用之社会” problematic from an etymology’s perspective? noticed the omission of 于 from the original 之于? none of the 12 meanings of “之” can make sense in this expression. pls let me know if you can interpret otherwise.

what if it were “取于社会,用于社会”? the 3rd meaning of “于” actually makes total sense and can be used to replace “诸” while still retaining its original meaning.

in short, “取之社会,用之社会” is totally meaningless etymologically. but, a quick google actually revealed that pple used and published “in “wrongly” . why? well, not everybody is etymologically-aware; how many of these writers are familiar if not linguists in old Chinese? and in our busy-ness, anything that ‘sounds’ correct goes? afterall, if something sounds ‘weird’, just repeat it 10 times verbally, and it’ll sound “just fine” — a ‘trick’ taught to me by my linguistic professor some 25 yrs ago.

and does something that appear in publications makes it (more) right? this is an epistemic question that was posed to me by my supervisor when i was doing lit review for my doctoral thesis.

to be fair, google also revealed pple pointing out what’s right, for example, here and here. but as per petraeus’s quote at the beginning of this post, pple may decide what’s ‘right’ and/or ‘ok’ to them cos it’s more appealing, for one reason or another.

in summary, “取之社会,用之社会” is problematic etymologically cos “之“ doesnt make any meaning-sense. “取于社会,用于社会” is an acceptable and meaning-accurate if “取诸社会,用诸社会” is archaic and more difficult, or if “取之于社会,用之于社会” is too lengthy an expression.

if you are a (Chinese) language teacher reading this, would you correct the “错误” in your student’s writing?

voice transcription software

it’s been a while since i needed this. a search quickly turns up Express Scribe Transcription from NCH. installed and tried using it. but found its Play with Stopping function’s not good enough for my poor memory.

hunted for a much older software, and found the good old VoiceWalker. there’s 2 versions, according to Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara. you can download version 2 or version 1 from the local mirror. but i think i have been using version 2 all along.

voicewalker

simply love and cant do without the Walk (F5) and Looping function.

the only catch is, VoiceWalker only supports wav; mp3 is a no go. but fret not, just download dvdvideosoft’s Free audio converter will do.

another thing to note is the file size of .wav. i just witnessed a 134mb mp3 converted into a whopping 984 wav. that’s not too environmentally friendly 😛

cnki 中国知网 searchable

was trying out NIE’s trial subscription to CNKI, and was plesantly surprised that my Fudan ma thesis 新加坡中学生的认识论信念华文学习信念探究 (An exploratory study of the epistemological beliefs and language learning beliefs of Singapore school Chinese Language students) is listed (: must thank my supervisor 张豫峰老师 for putting up the nomination.

direct URL: http://gb.oversea.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?QueryID=38&CurRec=33&dbCode=CMFD&filename=2010194992.nh&dbname=CMFDLAST2011&uid=WDVKbEthcGM0eWppZ2NleQ==

use computers for assessment of CL

i applaud dr lee wei ling for her article today in ST “Chinese: Easy to read, hard to write”. the title actually does not reflect fully the rich content within the article. for example, she introduced several key features of Chinese characters:

“a very common misconception about Chinese characters should be dispelled: They are not pictograms. They evolved to become logograms many centuries ago. A logogram is like the McDonald’s sign: it does not look like a burger, but it represents that concept”

“Most characters are made up of radicals, usually two radicals. One, termed the xingpang, indicates the category to which the character belongs … The second radical is the yinpang, the phonological radical. It hints at how the character is to be pronounced … There is a set of rules to determine the location of each radical in the character. The … xingpang are always on the left; the vegetation radical is always at the top of the character. The location of the yinpang is less strictly determined.”

“Chinese has many homophones. In addition, Mandarin has four tones … The tones are not usually represented in hanyu pinyin. Hence for each input of hanyu pinyin we make on a word processor, we can be presented with many possible characters. For example ‘jing’ has 41 characters corresponding to it with widely varying meanings.”

on comprehending chinese (text):

“A knowledge of a fairly limited number of characters can help us accurately guess the meaning of the words formed by a number of characters … So if a student of Chinese learns 1,500 to 2,000 characters, he can easily read a Chinese newspaper … The current Chinese curriculum in Singapore requires a Primary 6 student to know 1,500 to 2,000 characters.”

“Sometimes, a reader may be able to understand what he reads even if he cannot pronounce some of the component characters. … When I encounter a simplified character I do not know, I can guess its meaning from the context of the entire sentence.”

and sharing some of her research findings:

“I have tested more than 1,000 Chinese/English bilingual students from our primary and secondary schools. The ability to read Chinese, I found, was heavily dependent on the command of spoken Chinese.”

“In my research, I found that memory for aurally presented stories is an important independent predictor of Chinese reading ability.”

“I hypothesise that reading Chinese is a bit like fuzzy logic. There are many factors contributing to the ability to read Chinese; and in different contexts, each factor would carry a different weight.”

and here’s the part that pointed out the disparity between learning and assessment:

The irony is that students cannot use word processors in examinations and are required to write the characters. Hanyu pinyin and word processors are allowed in lessons and projects, but to be denied their use in exams makes the exams even more difficult. The Ministry of Education says it will take five or more years to revamp the Chinese curriculum. How many days does it take to change an illogical exam requirement?

“It is obvious that the burden of learning how to write in Chinese is overwhelming for many.”

i can hear many voices out there rejecting dr lee’s idea outright, for e.g. learning to write helps to recognise the characters, knowing the characters can only truly mean one really knows the chinese language; if our students don’t learn to write, they’re going to lose the culture. and the list can go on and on …

but if we take a look at the REAL world out there, how many pple still communicate without using word processors, newspapers, email, sms, etc. personally i have not seen a major newspaper that is printed with all the articles handwritten, have you? or a magazine, a journal article, or a business contract for that matter?

word processing (aka typing) is the current thing to represent the language. i recalled seeing research that had shown that typing helped in the mastery of chinese characters, and consequently helped to up the level of chinese mastery.

writing of chinese character will become an art form, just like the existing chinese calligraphy. if we were to deny and not encourage our young to express the language through typing, it’s as good as denying ourselves, the (slightly) older generaton, the pen, and we should go back to using the brush (or feather?).

let’s see how long it takes for the change that dr lee highlighted to take place. this would mean propelling 1-1 computing forward. and if that’s the case, learning of all subjects, not just CL, can potentially benefit from it (: