Business Practical Chinese

Author: / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2001-12-01
Features: Chinese characters are the writing symbols for the Chinese language, one of the oldest writing systems in the world. Throughout China's thousands of years of civilized history, they have played an extremely important role in the economic, political, and cultural life of the Chinese nation, carrying forward Chinese civilization. With the development of the times, more and more scholars of writing have come to believe that among the world's 5,000-plus language symbols, Chinese characters are the most clear and concise linguistic symbols. Compared to phonetic scripts, they possess unique advantages. With the advent of computer input for Chinese characters, they have even broader prospects for development. Chinese characters are not only the treasure of the Chinese nation but also have the potential to make greater contributions to human civilization.
I. The Origin and Methods of Chinese Character Creation
(1) The Origin of Chinese Characters
1. The Emergence of Primitive Chinese Characters
The painted symbols unearthed from the early site of Dadiwan in Qian County, Gansu, dating back to 7,330 to 7,800 years ago, as well as the numerous incised symbols later found in places like Banpo in Xi'an, Jiangzhai in Lintong, Wu City in Qingjiang, and Yang'an Bay in Yichang, are considered by some to be the earliest Chinese characters. Although many scholars do not recognize their scriptural nature, calling them "randomly incised record symbols" or "Bagua numerals," many Yi scholars have repeatedly pointed out that they have a direct origin with the existing ancient Yi script, and many incised symbols can be interpreted using ancient Yi.
The painted and incised pictographic symbols unearthed from the Dawenkou site in Qian County, Shandong, dating back to 5,500 to 6,300 years ago, are generally agreed upon by script scholars to be China's earliest Chinese characters. Although they are about 2,000 years later than the incised symbols from Dadiwan, their character structures already exhibit combinatorial forms similar to radicals and components. Their usage, context, and objects of inscription indicate a mature script for recording shamanistic incantations, characterized by pictographs. It seems there was a long period of early development before this; it is estimated that it took over 2,000 years to complete. This phonetic script with pictographic features may have spread to parts of the Americas with the migration of primitive residents, evolving into Mayan pictographic symbols, while others moved to Sichuan and became the Baoshu pictographs. As the primitive residents who remained in the Dawenkou area moved into the Central Plains, their script was absorbed by the ancestors of the Jiahu site in Wuyang County, Henan, evolving into the later oracle bone script of Yinxu. Thus, primitive Chinese characters likely emerged around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago during the late primitive society.
2. The Formation of the Chinese Character System
The development of any thing is a gradual process, and writing is no exception. The transition from primitive Chinese characters to a complete character system also took time, with no clear boundary between them. Due to limited data, historians and script scholars can only infer based on the materials they have. The exact time when Chinese characters fully developed from primitive scripts to a complete system can only be estimated: not earlier than the Xia Dynasty and not later than the Shang Dynasty.
Based on knowledge from archaeology, script studies, and history, no nation in the world had a relatively complete writing system before entering class society. China entered class society around the time of the Xia Dynasty, so the formation of a complete Chinese character system could not have been earlier than the Xia Dynasty. By the late 3rd millennium BCE, with the establishment of the Xia Dynasty, China entered class society. The ruling class, seeking effective governance, would naturally demand a more refined writing system, accelerating the improvement of existing scripts. Under these conditions, Chinese characters gradually evolved into a complete system between the Xia and Shang Dynasties, around the 17th century BCE, approximately 3,600 to 3,700 years ago.
(2) The Formation of Phrases
The use of different function words can result in phrases with different grammatical relationships and meanings. For example, the phrases "leaders and masses" and "led masses" differ grammatically and semantically. The first uses the function word "and," making the two terms parallel in grammar and representing two subjects in meaning. The second uses "led," forming a modifier-referent relationship, where "masses" is the object of "led," representing a single subject in meaning. Thus, function words are also an important method for combining phrases.
(3) The Distinction Between Phrases, Words, and Sentences
1. The Distinction Between Phrases and Words
(1) Meaning-Based Difference
Words have a holistic meaning, meaning that the meaning of a word as a whole is indivisible. For most compound words, their meaning is not simply the sum of the meanings of their constituent morphemes. For example, the compound words "white cabbage" and "soybean" are formed from "white" + "cabbage" and "big" + "bean," respectively, representing a vegetable and a plant name, not "white cabbage" or "big bean." Phrases, however, differ in that the meaning of a phrase is the sum of the meanings of its constituent words. For example, "white flower" and "big mountain" mean "white flower" and "big mountain."
(2) Structural Difference
The components of words are morphemes. In compound words, the combination of morphemes is very tight and fixed, and cannot be extended. For example, "Mao Zedong" is a noun composed of three morphemes. Words can be used freely in sentences, but once morphemes form a word, they cannot be used freely. The components of phrases are words. In phrases, the combination of words is generally more flexible, with looser and less fixed structures that can be extended. For example, "leader Mao Zedong" is a phrase composed of "leader" and "Mao Zedong." This phrase can be extended to "the people's leader Mao Zedong," "the leader of the Chinese people Mao Zedong," etc.
For example, the words "lofty" and "ideal" can combine to form the attributive phrase "lofty ideal" or the subject-predicate phrase "ideal lofty." This shows that phrase structures are looser and more flexible. Additionally, word structures only use one means of construction: the arrangement of morphemes. Phrase structures, in addition to word order, often use structural function words like "de," "dì," "de," and conjunctions like "and," "and," "and." For example, "very cold" cannot form a phrase without the function word "de." Another example is "discuss and pass," forming a coordinate phrase.
Finally, non-basic types of phrases, such as "reduplicated phrases," "directional phrases," "modal phrases," "prepositional phrases," and "comparative phrases," are rarely found in word structures. However, words can be formed by adding prefixes or suffixes, which are not present in phrases.
(3) Functional Difference
Words are divided into real words and function words. They both have certain grammatical functions in sentences. Generally, phrases only have grammatical functions equivalent to real words, but not those equivalent to function words. However, the functions of phrases are usually greater than those of words of the same type. This is mainly reflected in their ability to form sentences. Except for prepositional phrases, other types of phrases can form sentences as long as they are given a certain tone.