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Discussion of "Bigrams shared in ZhouYi, ShiJing and ZuoZhuan, by Fabio Galassi"

dfreed

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(Discussion moved from here: https://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/fri...-shijing-and-zuozhuan-by-fabio-galassi.33163/ ~Moderators)



Here I provide a survey on shared characters (bigrams at least)

Both of these PDF files are in Chinese - which is not very useful, for me at least. I read somewhere else that:
"Bigrams ... exist in the Chinese language, because almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character. Although a single character has its own meaning, it is often when it is combined with another character that it is used as a word in Chinese."

This seems to be the same (or a similar) idea which Rutt shares in his Zhouyi, explaining 'radicals':
The(se) additional strokes are usually, if illogically, called in English a ‘radical’. Broadly speaking, the ‘radical’ suggests the general meaning of the word, while the original character gives the sound, though in the course of centuries this sound may have changed and now no longer be exactly the same for every character which still contains the protograph.
For example, the character huang, meaning ‘yellow’, is differentiated by adding:
* ‘the water radical’ to make huang meaning ‘to flow’,
* 'the jade radical’ to mean a half-moon jade pendant; while other radicals give
* guang ‘broad’ and
* kuang ‘a desert’.
Also, in his Translation Notes, Rutt has many instances where a particular word or Yi phrase has resonance or similarities with the Book of Odes - and other texts. Ex.​
" .... Compare 'mustering men in the countryside' (from Hex. 18) with the great hunting meet (dong) for military training mentioned in the Ode 154:4" [p307]

I think all Chinese documents, books, writings have 'bigrams' - shared characters - so we would expect to find these when looking at two different texts. And since all three of these are from around the same ancient period, I'd expect to find shared words, language, theme, ideas .... and I think (as Rutt shows in the example above) where looking at these shared themes or ideas could be useful for us.

However, I'm not entirely sure how just using bigrams themselves gets us to:

"Trac(ing) incipient language bridges among the two classics (and) also to share analysis and evaluations from both Shijing [Book of Odes] and Chun Qiu Zuo Zhuan [Zuo Commentary?] for the benefit of the Yi reader" ???

Do you have any examples you can share with us, of where you've found these bigrams useful or of benefit in understanding the Yi?

Best, D.
 
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hilary

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Both of these PDF files are in Chinese - which is not very useful, for me at least. I read somewhere else that:
"Bigrams ... exist in the Chinese language, because almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character. Although a single character has its own meaning, it is often when it is combined with another character that it is used as a word in Chinese."

This seems to be the same (or a similar) idea which Rutt shares in his Zhouyi, explaining 'radicals':...

It's not the same: radicals are components of a single character; bigrams are two characters together. Examples: daren (great person), junzi (noble one).

(You're right, though, that Rutt's endnotes are a treasure-trove of Shijing references. Enormously helpful.)

I don't read Chinese either, but the pdf is helpfully organised by the Zhouyi text, so that's not hard to follow. I'm going to find it helpful, as the modern dictionary often identifies two adjacent words in the Yi as a bigram, and I'm left wondering whether it really was one at the time, or whether the two characters should actually be read separately. Besides, it shows me which expressions will give me results if I search for them in the Shijing!
 

dfreed

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I'm going to find it helpful

So, these are more like 'compound words' and not just a single character with two parts to it. And that's good that you find them useful.
 

surnevs

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Both of these PDF files are in Chinese - which is not very useful, for me at least. I read somewhere else that:
"Bigrams ... exist in the Chinese language, because almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character. Although a single character has its own meaning, it is often when it is combined with another character that it is used as a word in Chinese."

This seems to be the same (or a similar) idea which Rutt shares in his Zhouyi, explaining 'radicals':
The(se) additional strokes are usually, if illogically, called in English a ‘radical’. Broadly speaking, the ‘radical’ suggests the general meaning of the word, while the original character gives the sound, though in the course of centuries this sound may have changed and now no longer be exactly the same for every character which still contains the protograph.
For example, the character huang, meaning ‘yellow’, is differentiated by adding:
* ‘the water radical’ to make huang meaning ‘to flow’,
* 'the jade radical’ to mean a half-moon jade pendant; while other radicals give
* guang ‘broad’ and
* kuang ‘a desert’.
Also, in his Translation Notes, Rutt has many instances where a particular word or Yi phrase has resonance or similarities with the Book of Odes - and other texts. Ex.​
" .... Compare 'mustering men in the countryside' (from Hex. 18) with the great hunting meet (dong) for military training mentioned in the Ode 154:4" [p307]

I think all Chinese documents, books, writings have 'bigrams' - shared characters - so we would expect to find these when looking at two different texts. And since all three of these are from around the same ancient period, I'd expect to find shared words, language, theme, ideas .... and I think (as Rutt shows in the example above) where looking at these shared themes or ideas could be useful for us.

However, I'm not entirely sure how just using bigrams themselves gets us to:

"Trac(ing) incipient language bridges among the two classics (and) also to share analysis and evaluations from both Shijing [Book of Odes] and Chun Qiu Zuo Zhuan [Zuo Commentary?] for the benefit of the Yi reader" ???

Do you have any examples you can share with us, of where you've found these bigrams useful or of benefit in understanding the Yi?

Best, D.

I do not read Chinese neither yet I use it when I use (often use) Gregory C. Richter's I Ching pdf *.
In my Profile posting, I have given You a pdf with links useful for that, Online Offline tools named.
Besides that, dfreed, if You can't use it maybe others can, right?

*) Together with Joel Birocco's page with the book of Changes in Chinese, of cause
 

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fabio galassi

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Dear Surnevs,
many thanks for sharing this work.

At an incipient level, a bigram in the field of so-called 'Computational Linguistics', is simply the occurence of a consecutive sequences of words, called n-grams.
So 2-grams, as bi-grams are two characters that appears in (the same) sequence, in this case both in Yi, in ShiJing and/or in ChunQiuZuoZhuan.
Some of these occurences are clearly meaningful, as the famous, 君子 jūn zǐ, others less as 用為 yòng wéi as a verbal unit.

In a text like ZhouYi, built (often) on a progressions of 4+4 characters, with prosody and meter well balanced, a bigram, i.e., is meaningful to trace not only the rhytm but also as involved in the rhyming patterns (in the line or throughout more lines of text); rhyme that is so much different in 'sound' as today pronounciation.
For example the above 君子 jūn zǐ, in an old chinese transcription is rendered (with IPA phonetic alphabet) as > klun ʔljɯʔ < that is not evidently the same of jūn zǐ...

This great difference among chinese language is true not only in phonetics but obviously in scripts (not properly the same of above) and in semantic/lexical composition.
So, when dfreed quote the "almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character" s/he's ignorant about the fact that this assumption is true only for modern chinese and opposite in ancient chinese, where disyllabic compounds as a unique 'word' are the exceptions.

Sharing bigrams, could offer to those interested in the language of ZhouYi (that I take the liberty to remember, is not english), to look at other contexts and may be, other glosses, ideas and situations than those presented by 'n' translators, as Hilary pointed to.
And context matters, in Chinese.

For some, basics, on lexical computation, here specifically, both on frequency and keywords analysis, I suggests the works of Sergey Zinin of Warring State Project (him, among hundreds of researchers in Digital Humanities): https://umass.academia.edu/SergeyZinine.

Regards,
Fabio.
 

surnevs

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Dear Mr Galassi, thank You for clarifying.
 

dfreed

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So, when dfreed quote the "almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character" s/he's ignorant about the fact that this assumption is true only for modern chinese and opposite in ancient chinese

To say that I'm 'ignorant of ....” feels a bit strong to me.

It is true, however, that I am ignorant in some respects: I don't read (nor speak) Chinese, either in its modern or archaic forms, and I am not a sinologist nor a historian, and the same can be said for most people on this forum.

Instead I'm someone with a keen interest in the Yi – as are most of us here – and I have not just pulled my ideas out of thin air. So, as to what I said about combined or variant characters - I believe this may be true, at least in part - and what I think is a more true and correct statement would be to say that:

"During the time the Zhouyi was written "many (or some?) Chinese glyphs / characters were made up of more than one part (i.e. radical and phonetic), and loan words were also in use. "

Why?

From Richard Rutt: “(The Mawangdui manuscript) encourages us to read the received text of Zhouyi with an eye to the use of loan characters and phonetic variants”. He also says (as I understand it) that the use of variants – characters that had both 'radical' and phonetic components – likely developed at the same time as the Zhouyi, though their use was certainly not fully developed at that time. I call these 'combined' – in that they are made up of two or more characters.

I also said what I did because of Stephen Field's description of the hexagram names – which he shows as “bronze script ideographs” - which are precursors to modern Chinese script. As I understand it, he's describing some of the hexagrams as being 'combined':

Hexagram 5 - Xu, A Drenching - The upper element of Xu 需 means “rain”

... and ...

Hexagram 6 - The graph of song 訟 is composed of the element “to speak” on the left, and the phonetic element, gong, which means, “duke.”

In other words, there is some basis for my ignorance. (And I'm more than willing to revise my understanding as I learn more.)

More to the point: I mistakenly thought surnevs and you were referring to variants / combined glyphs, when in fact you are talking about something different: two or more characters used in a phrase; and what you're pointing out is where some of these are found in both the Yi and the Book of Songs, AND where they are found in both the Yi and the Zou Commentary.

I now understand (unless you say otherwise) what you are discussing. I still question what use these might be to me – especially if I or others don't know Chinese in either it's ancient or modern forms, and if we also don't know or fully understand how important context and placement is in how the Zhouyi and other texts are composed; and if we don't know about or understand fully about the use of loan words and variants in the Zhou era - all of which I think applies to many of us here.

I can, however, imagine this being of use, e.g: if someone were to look at a particular bigram - say jun zi and see how it was used in both the Yi and Songs – and perhaps then glean a better or different understanding of jun zi - "the noble, worthy, honored young one, heir, disciple" (from Hatcher) - by looking at how this phrase is used in these different texts.

Hilary has said she sees some usefulness here, and I'm willing to go along with that – and others may find something of valuable here as well - in the same way I find looking at the nuclear trigrams, and in reading about myth and divination in ancient China useful.

Best, D
 
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surnevs

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I have passed on some material that some might have not been aware of for information. I have done that in accordance with the general rules for this section of the online-with-clarity forum. Those to whom it has no interest are free to go. Those to whom it has interest save it for further studies like I intended to do. And thank You one more time, Fabio Galassi.
 

fabio galassi

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Dears,

I'm sure, Dfreed, about your 'keen interest in the Yi' as mine in researching patterns.
And now that both, me and Dfreed, went hitted, we are cracked-opened to discussion, as and in the same manner, turtles and bone went cracked by fire, 'disclosing' meaning via signs.

So, while I have nothing to say on 'who make use of tools and how', I've something to argument in the field of chinese, and specifically in ancient chinese that is my 'keen interest'.

...and I'll keep you in 'feeling a bit strong' while arriving at a point where we could listen to each other keen interests and not over.

For example, trying to dismantle the idea of radicals (basing on my ignorance).
Radicals are nothing but an invention to organize pre-existing material.
Radicals are 540 in ShuoWenJieZi, then 214 up to KangXi dictionary.
They are just a way to see the 'chinese', and not the correct one to delve in ZhouYi, where 'radicals' are unknown [if really we agree about Yi origins -as a text- around 700 bc]
We could talk, better, of the so called 'composite characters', opening a very huge field, populated by compounds categories (ideographic, pictophonetic, loans..), shape alterations of components, dysillabification of single characters and many other 'tricks' well showing the volatile flow in the history of pre-Qin script.

'Radicals', emerges in the process of 'transcription' of guwen (generically -and not exactly- the ancient pre-Qin script) in 'standard' chinese.
It is a hard task that follows normally a process called 'liding', where a character like 仁 is connected for example to 1635857462170.png (a handwrite character in the Guodian corpus, late WarringStates).
And in this process, keeping all together (shape, meaning, sound) is often difficult.

I'd like to hear from you, Dfreed, more a honest attitude in what you feel as 'keen interest', leaving room for incertitude, in what instead it seems your 'not-keen' interests. Not-keen yet.

The same question you seem to pose above, I replicate here:
"Are you entirely sure how just using" the informations you stocked, "gets you to"
“read the received text of Zhouyi with an eye to the use of loan characters and phonetic variants”?

I wish we could work on hints from 睽.

Regards.
 
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dfreed

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I'm sure, Dfreed, about your 'keen interest in the Yi' as mine in researching patterns.

I'm not really following, nor fully understand what you're saying above. I do think you are much more interested in researching patterns (in specific ways), which is perhaps why you posted the two PDFs in the first place, is that about right? If that's true, what are the 'patterns' you're looking for in the Yi, the Book of Songs, and the Zou Commentaries? Is it as I suggested here ....
e.g: if someone were to look at a particular bigram - say jun zi and see how it was used in both the Yi and Songs – and perhaps then glean a better or different understanding of jun zi - "the noble, worthy, honored young one, heir, disciple" (from Hatcher) - by looking at how this phrase is used in these different texts.

Is this correct, or at least one possible way that someone can make use of your PDFs? And/or are you suggesting other ways to make use of what you shared?

... not the correct one to delve in ZhouYi, where 'radicals' are unknown ...

From what I've read, I understand that compound characters were being used at the time the Yi was written - though not as extensively as a few centuries later and up through today. My understanding is this describes characters being made of different 'parts' - conveying subject and pronunciation - and the character's meaning is derived from a combination of these. A large majority of modern Chinese characters are made this way - though there are likely legitimate questions as to when these were first used.

I also understand from Rutt, Field, Shaughnessey and others that 'loan' words were used and/or words carried multiple meanings were in use at the time of the Yi, and this is why all of these authors' translations are different in places - and it's perhaps part of the reason why there is so much variation with later (Han era and on) translations - not to mention the many thousands of commentaries that became part of the 'received text' and other versions of the Yi.

But none of that changes what I said here: that you and others have helped me clarify what it is you are talking about (which is about bigrams and not about variants, radicals, combined characters, etc.), and that some people will find your PDF useful.

And if I happen to find what you shared interesting, but also something I choose not to make use of at this time, that is not a reflection of either my 'honesty' nor my 'keen interest' in the Yi!

I'd like to hear from you, Dfreed, more a honest attitude in what you feel as 'keen interest', leaving room for incertitude, in what instead it seems your 'not-keen' interests. Not-keen yet.

I am being honest here. I'm not sure what more 'honesty' you want? And I don't think it's your place to define (for me and others) what either my honesty or my keen interest means - as I have not done for you.

I have a 'keen interest' in the Yi, in that I've been studying it for a while now (perhaps not as long as you), and I have certain ways that I work with it and find it useful. I also have a 'keen interest', which is reflected in what I choose to read, study, pay attention to, etc. - which is exactly what you, and Hilary and Sven and all of us do, but in different ways. So, if you're going to question my honesty or keen interest I think you need to do the same for yourself and everyone else!

Speaking of 'honesty', I wonder, do you honestly believe that given the hundreds of translations and interpretations - into Chinese and other languages; and the varied views about the development of the Chinese language; and the varied ideas of how the Yi developed and changed over time (most broadly described as starting as an oracle and 'developing into' a book of wisdom) and the thousands of comments and commentaries, and the vastly different views (and people's 'rules') on how to work with the Yi, and how it developed and changed, etc.... that you think we (or you) have arrived - or can arrive - at any place of 'certitude' concerning the Yi?

Given all this, if your 'keen interest' still involves trying to erase any 'incertitude' (uncertainty or hesitation), that's your path to follow.

However, I often approach the Yi as I would a dream or myth, (or as if it is 'speaking to me' as if in a dream or myth) where a state of incertitude is a given. But that doesn't preclude finding meaning and usefulness in the Yi - in the same way that it does not preclude us from finding meaning in myths and dreams. Some in this forum talk about the Shamanic Roots of the Yijing - not my words, but I think it's perhaps describing the same thing, so I get their drift.

Regards, D
 
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fabio galassi

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Dear DFreed,

thank you for your last reply.
When I talk about 'honesty', I mean what you wrote in the last three paragraphs, above.
'The rest is noise' as Alex Ross wrote years ago (on XX Century Music Composers).

I take the liberty to share what I find in the highly honest, insightful and thorough work of a non-master but Yi-friend as Bradford Hatcher was:

"Anyone who claims to be close to certainty in their interpretation
is either deluded or else trying to fool you.
It is too late for perfect understanding -the time is long past for certainty.
And barring an archaeological miracle several orders of magnitude greater than
what the twentieth century produced, there has been far too much water gone
flowing down the Yangtze to ever get upstream and recover what went on in the
minds of the Zhouyi authors.
We must live with speculation, learn to be honest about it
and work to become more effective in this uncertain state."

Each of us, rooted in the perfect field of 'keens' , we will achive and grasp some gift.

Hilary, certainly not a sinologist, has her reasons posing us the followings:

"While you wait, how can you best make yourself ready?"
You wait for what you need [...] but you cannot force this [...] it may all take much longer than you had imagined.

"What are you arguing for?"
[...] When frustrated and blocked you need to see great people [...] perhaps you need to consult with someone wiser [...] perhaps you can find that shift in perspective within yourself.

Mirrors, shifts, projections...

Many thanks Surnevs,
a good journey.
 

dfreed

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When I talk about 'honesty', I mean what you wrote in the last three paragraphs, above.

Do you mean the last three paragraphs of post no. 11, which start with me saying:
Speaking of 'honesty' .... ?

If so, what part of - or which words from - my last three paragraphs address "what you mean"? It seems I said a lot of stuff in those three paragraphs, so I'm asking for more specifics from you.

Hatcher: We must live with speculation, learn to be honest about it, and work to become more effective in this uncertain state."

Yes, an "uncertain state" which is similar to - or perhaps the same as - what I wrote in my 'last three paragraphs':

"the Yi as ... a dream or myth, ... where a state of incertitude is a given" .... so about this issue, Bradford Hatcher and I are of like minds (if only he were still alive so he could speak to this).

"What are you arguing for?"
[...] When frustrated and blocked you need to see great people [...] perhaps you need to consult with someone wiser [...] perhaps you can find that shift in perspective within yourself.

Who said this? And is the 'you' here (as in 'what are you arguing for) you or I - or someone else (or any of us)? Regardless, I often do what you are suggesting: consult others - and I often have shifts in perspective within myself.

Are you implying that you think I don't do this? Or are you saying that we all can (or do) consult others, and we all can (or do) have shifts of perspective within ourselves? Or maybe something else entirely?

D.
 

fabio galassi

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Dfreed,

Yes, #11.
May be, Bradford Hatcher could be less compliant with dreams and shamanics but the focus is there.

The quotations (the questions and texts) are from hex 5 and 6 -you took in the process- from Hilary Book:
"Walking your path, creating your future" [so 'you' is you, the reader].
 

dfreed

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Yes, #11.

May be, Bradford Hatcher ...

The quotations ... are from hex 5 and 6 -you took in the process- from Hilary Book ....

Okay, so you are talking about the last three paragraphs I wrote in no. 11 above (we have established that), but we still don't know what specific parts or words (out of the 220 or so words I used) you're referring to - so it's hard for me to understand what you mean. Which certainly leaves you and I (and perhaps all of us) in a Yi-like 'uncertain state'.

And Bradford and I both talk about the Yi's state of incertitude - but of course we do this in different ways.

It's fine you quoted Hilary's Yi, though I never did (at least not in this thread). But I don't know what "you took in the process" means? You seem to be adding more uncertainty into this conversation!

... And, I don't know what you mean by 'the rest is noise'? No matter really. It seems we agree upon the Yi's state of uncertainty - and perhaps this is all that matters - and all the rest - all of my ideas about shamans and loan words, and all of your ideas about 'patterns' and radicals - is all just a bunch of noise.

I can live with that. Or did you perhaps mean something else?

PS - what is a "perfect field of 'keens'"? I have no idea.

d.
 
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surnevs

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Sorry for interrupting here, but what this mainly is about is that I found some material useful and shared it with all of you here.
Just like I use a dictionary, one or more different translations of the book of changes etc. I can use Mr Galassi's material along the way for clarification.
I already mentioned this and I will repeat it:
(#9)

rep.jpg

and I will also one more time mention the link to Mr Galassi's page.
 

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This thread was originally posted, quite rightly, in I Ching News.

I Ching News is for posting links and so on to inform other members of developments and things that may be of interest. If the post is relevant to the I Ching as it is here there is no reason why the initial poster, Sernevs linking to Fabio's work, should have to go on and on justifying why they posted it at all to one member's satisfaction. They aren't under obligation to justify posting the link. It is after all precisely the forum where one would expect to find such a link.

They have been asked to repeatedly justify the reason for posting, repeatedly asked what 'use' it is.


I still question what use these might be to me – especially if I or others don't know Chinese in either it's ancient or modern forms, and if we also don't know or fully understand how important context and placement is in how the Zhouyi and other texts are composed; and if we don't know about or understand fully about the use of loan words and variants in the Zhou era - all of which I think applies to many of us here.

Things posted in I Ching News aren't required to be of use to you.

As Sernevs has said several times now, if you find it useful good and if you don't that's okay too. There will be others who do find it useful as you have said.

Hilary has said she sees some usefulness here, and I'm willing to go along with that – and others may find something of valuable here as well -
Quite.

And generally, to repeat, in the I Ching News forum the OP is not required to fully justify how useful it might be to any one member unless of course what they posted has no connection at all to the subject but here it clearly does have connection to the subject.

Sorry for interrupting here, but what this mainly is about is that I found some material useful and shared it with all of you here.
Yes and you posted it in I Ching News where it belongs for those who are interested and there should be no need for you to have to justify posting there because another person doesn't find it 'of use' to them.

As this has become a discussion due to the demand dfreed made it be 'of use' to him in particular it was moved over here to the discussion area with the original link still in I Ching News.
 

dfreed

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the I Ching News forum the OP is not required to fully justify how useful it might be to any one member
I have never 'required' any justification from anyone in the thread! What said, in summary is:

.... others have helped me clarify what it is you are talking about (which is about bigrams and not about variants, radicals, combined characters, etc.), and ... some people will find your PDFs useful.

Much of the additional discussion - by myself and by others - is because someone referred to me as ignorant and because this same person asked me to 'honestly' share what I thought. And I responded, because I assume it's okay to respond when someone calls another ignorant or asks for their honest response. What others have done here goes way beyond 'providing information'.

At this point, however, I'm fine with leaving things be.
 
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surnevs

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(Discussion moved from here: https://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/fri...-shijing-and-zuozhuan-by-fabio-galassi.33163/ ~Moderators)



Both of these PDF files are in Chinese - which is not very useful, for me at least. I read somewhere else that:
"Bigrams ... exist in the Chinese language, because almost all Chinese ‘words’ are made up of more than one character. Although a single character has its own meaning, it is often when it is combined with another character that it is used as a word in Chinese."

This seems to be the same (or a similar) idea which Rutt shares in his Zhouyi, explaining 'radicals':
The(se) additional strokes are usually, if illogically, called in English a ‘radical’. Broadly speaking, the ‘radical’ suggests the general meaning of the word, while the original character gives the sound, though in the course of centuries this sound may have changed and now no longer be exactly the same for every character which still contains the protograph.
For example, the character huang, meaning ‘yellow’, is differentiated by adding:
* ‘the water radical’ to make huang meaning ‘to flow’,
* 'the jade radical’ to mean a half-moon jade pendant; while other radicals give
* guang ‘broad’ and
* kuang ‘a desert’.
Also, in his Translation Notes, Rutt has many instances where a particular word or Yi phrase has resonance or similarities with the Book of Odes - and other texts. Ex.​
" .... Compare 'mustering men in the countryside' (from Hex. 18) with the great hunting meet (dong) for military training mentioned in the Ode 154:4" [p307]

I think all Chinese documents, books, writings have 'bigrams' - shared characters - so we would expect to find these when looking at two different texts. And since all three of these are from around the same ancient period, I'd expect to find shared words, language, theme, ideas .... and I think (as Rutt shows in the example above) where looking at these shared themes or ideas could be useful for us.

However, I'm not entirely sure how just using bigrams themselves gets us to:

"Trac(ing) incipient language bridges among the two classics (and) also to share analysis and evaluations from both Shijing [Book of Odes] and Chun Qiu Zuo Zhuan [Zuo Commentary?] for the benefit of the Yi reader" ???

Do you have any examples you can share with us, of where you've found these bigrams useful or of benefit in understanding the Yi?

Best, D.

- for clarification, I later wrote this commentary: #8 meaning that these papers of Fabio Galassi I shared here were material for use for those interested, not necessarily instantly but along the way.
dfreed, could some misunderstandings have occurred because my first posting may have left the impression to You that I brought this forth for discussion ? If so, I feel it a bit easier to understand your post here.....
 
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surnevs

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Being the case or not I'll be more aware to bring forth what I find useful concerning the Book of Changes with a "for Information" more clear to avoid misunderstandings. In my eyes and seen in the light of that this forum is Global misunderstandings can't be avoided completely. It's a shame but not a catastrophe.
 

tacrab

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This discussion went way off track. Suggestions for all:

* Keep posts and comments short, clearly worded, with topics focused, not sprawling. Otherwise, it's difficult to sort out what the core discussion is really about. This one started with linguistics and texts, and ended up going off in multiple directions, even within a single sentence.
* Make clear when something is one's own opinion versus fact, make sure that the facts are correct, and make sure facts being used in correct context, with correct terms. When needed, ask an expert first.
* Do research on topics before making post, or at least, give caveat and context, e.g., "Here is something I'm thinking through; I'm interested in opinions of others."
* As moderators have ruled, post in appropriate place. If you don't know where, ask.
 
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tacrab

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As for Svenrus' original post, studying the Zhouyi text in Chinese is quite complex. For those wishing to get a taste of the original language, Legge translation, dictionary, parallel passages in other early texts, as well as other easily accessed tools, the is invaluable. Make sure to read about HOW to use the site.

Here are some reliable resources on Chinese language: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-languages/Han-and-Classical-Chinese and https://omniglot.com/chinese/ have some helpful explanations. The Wikipedia entry appears to be fairly decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese. Victor Mair writes about how hard it is to learn: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42963.
 

surnevs

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And more link's will be found on the attachment on #4 *, as I collected in an attempt mainly for diving deeper into single words and phrases, that being in curiosity, well - but for the layman like myself. Mr Galassi's comprehensive work can be used when wanting to broaden the "World of an I Ching reading". No one does need to understand this - the work of Mr Galassi - fully and immediately but rather use it as a tool to understand the book of Changes (along the way).

*) Gregory C. Richters translation can be found:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210401144813/http://grichter.sites.truman.edu/files/2012/01/yjnew.pdf
 
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IrfanK

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As for Svenrus' original post, studying the Zhouyi text in Chinese is quite complex. For those wishing to get a taste of the original language, Legge translation, dictionary, parallel passages in other early texts, as well as other easily accessed tools, the is invaluable. Make sure to read about HOW to use the site.

Here are some reliable resources on Chinese language: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-languages/Han-and-Classical-Chinese and https://omniglot.com/chinese/ have some helpful explanations. The Wikipedia entry appears to be fairly decent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese. Victor Mair writes about how hard it is to learn: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42963.
I really wish Harmen Mesker would start a class on how to use Chinese-language sources for people with no or limited Chinese. Hilary once did a one hour session on this, as part of some other course (Imagery?), all about how to use Pleco and so on, but it wasn't anywhere nearly enough time. Harmen would be the perfect teacher for this, I reckon. He could cover the very basics of how characters are structured, how they are categorized in dictionaries, the way different characters can have multiple meanings, the specific issues with Old Chinese, many other issues.

Might not be such a crowd-drawer compared to the Yijing Astrology thing, but I'd sure sign up.

I did look into how difficult it would be to learn Chinese. According to the US State Department language school, it takes about four times as long to teach someone Mandarin to a reasonable proficient level as it takes for German or French, about three times as long as for Russian. In fact, Chinese, together with Japanese, Korean and Arabic, were listed as the four most difficult of the languages they included. I was surprised to see that they ranked Indonesian as slightly harder than most European languages -- not my personal impression, I have to say.

I'm not sure I've got that many decades left.
 
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fabio galassi

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Dear all,
thank you very much for this little example of 'collective intelligence' I frequently met in this as in other forums.

I often know in advance what will follow by pushing some keys, however I keep pushing.
My apologies.

Dfreed is right asking for a better explication of the tools he meets, but, and this is my view spent here, just with a different attitude, as mine too, sure.

I loved also the adherence of hexagrams n. 5 and 6 that Dfreed 'calls' as examples of his 'keen basis' and in doing so, grasping my attention to the process above they underlined accordingly.

At least, my thankful appreciation for your (readers) kind benevolence to my uncertain english.

Regards,
Fabio
 

dfreed

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Dfreed is right asking for a better explication of the tools he meets, but, and this is my view spent here, just with a different attitude, as mine too, sure.

Thanks for adding this. This is my sense as well.

My intent here was never to demand anyone repeatedly justify what they had shared - and if anyone did that, it was of their own volition. Nor was my intent to stop any discourse; our discussion and 'banter' back and forth is a good example of sharing 'different attitudes'; or as you said - in a perhaps poetic / mythic way, we are cracking a few oracle bones here.

Regardless of how this topic ended up being in Exploring Divination, more people are now taking part - which is a good thing. It seems it is now (at least the last time I checked) about learning and studying Chinese. That was never my focus of interest but we all know - and agree - that these threads can take on a life of their own, and end up where no one intended - or as Capt. Kirk once said, they "go where none of the myriad beings have gone before!" (or was it King Wen or Lao Tzu who said that?) :cool:

Regards, D
 
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surnevs

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I really wish Harmen Mesker would start a class on how to use Chinese-language sources for people with no or limited Chinese. Hilary once did a one hour session on this, as part of some other course (Imagery?), all about how to use Pleco and so on, but it wasn't anywhere nearly enough time. Harmen would be the perfect teacher for this, I reckon. He could cover the very basics of how characters are structured, how they are categorized in dictionaries, the way different characters can have multiple meanings, the specific issues with Old Chinese, many other issues.

Might not be such a crowd-drawer compared to the Yijing Astrology thing, but I'd sure sign up.

I did look into how difficult it would be to learn Chinese. According to the US State Department language school, it takes about four times as long to teach someone Mandarin to a reasonable proficient level as it takes for German or French, about three times as long as for Russian. In fact, Chinese, together with Japanese, Korean and Arabic, were listed as the four most difficult of the languages they included. I was surprised to see that they ranked Indonesian as slightly harder than most European languages -- not my personal impression, I have to say.

I'm not sure I've got that many decades left.

For the moment I have no intention to learn Chinese but "Never say never"; I use the material at hand, being Online or by using books, when questions arise concerning a reading I really don't understand or want to dive deeper into - and here resources like those given by tacrab (#21) and elsewhere are useful, and latest, concerning this thread, more materials have been given by Mr Galassi.
And I do agree with You that Harmen Mesker is good at it!
 

hilary

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I really wish Harmen Mesker would start a class on how to use Chinese-language sources for people with no or limited Chinese.
That would be brilliant!
 

surnevs

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Hi Hilary, Had I been a Sage :rolleyes: we could easily have been waiting for fifty years more for a reaction on this, for my part :D, but as an alternative when I bought a license to MDBG * I was offered an Online education - which I haven't used - tool, which maybe could have interest in case Mr Mesker hasn't got time to start a class?
____________________________________

*)


chle.jpg
 

surnevs

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I think I only recommended an alternative like this because I've been using MDBG for years. Sorry if this advertisement felt dismissive for the possibility that Mr Mesker could open a Class. This wasn't the intention. (-and MDBG isn't my employer, no reason for me to suggest them rather than any other good Online-Chinese-lesson-program).
 

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