Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 October 17

= October 17 =

Ideographic theory
So, I read a very interesting book titled Ideography and Chinese Language Theory by Timothy Michael O'Neill, and I realized there's a rather large hole on Wikipedia concerning how autochthonous Chinese language theory historically presented itself, rather than just stating received structures. I know one book isn't enough to write an article based on, and I'm looking in the index, but is there any books, in English and I'll really try to read one in Chinese if those're my options, on 'Chinese language theory', per se? The Erya, how Confucians saw language as a tool for administration, etc. Remsense  聊  02:01, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The book is an expansion of the author's original ideas developed in his 2010 Ph.D. thesis. I have found only somewhat fleeting references. What would be the precise topic of the article? Not only do you need more than one source for any statements included in the content – possibly also to account for multiple points of view – but also multiple sources establishing the notability of the topic.  --Lambiam 08:38, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course! I suppose the topic is, well, Chinese language theory. Autochthonous Chinese linguistics over history, their own views on how language worked. Remsense  聊  18:55, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that this title is ambiguous. "Broken windows theory" should be parsed as "(Broken windows) theory" – a theory related to broken windows, although some will say this theory is itself broken. "Critical race theory" is not a theory related to critical race; it should be parsed as "Critical (race theory)" – a critical approach to race theory. So is the topic "(Chinese language) theory" or "Chinese (language theory)"? --Lambiam 21:49, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Aye! I would say it's probably more like Language theory in China. Remsense  聊  21:50, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * So is your topic like "how Chinese scholars perceived the Chinese written language as conveying the ideas behind it"? I low key feel like the earlier bits of Qiu Xigui's Chinese Writing (2000, transl. Jerry Norman and Gilbert Mattos) touch on the history of that, but it might have been the other Jerry Norman book Chinese. I'm not super sure what your search terms are going to be. "文字學" will get you a lot of stuff adjacent to what it seems like you're looking for. You could also start with Xu Shen and work your way outwards, or find Qiu Xigui's bibliography and start going through that. There are definitely English language sources about this, but it's not super clear what topic you're trying to get at.For funsies: in the late 1930s, Herlee G. Creel and Peter Boodberg had a protracted back-and-forth nerd fight in the journal T'oung Pao about the nature of Chinese characters, to the point where the journal's editor told them in print that he was over it and they'd have to continue their argument elsewhere. Source (TWL link). Folly Mox (talk) 10:00, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much as always Folly! Remsense  聊  18:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! I was wrong about where in the book it takes place, but an overview of the history of Chinese theory about Chinese characters from the Zhouli to Chen Mengjia is at Folly Mox (talk) 20:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Looking through the bibliography, I'm seeing the following potentially applicable English language source: The bibliography is of course almost all Chinese language sources. Folly Mox (talk) 20:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Long U palatal question
A lot of the times when the English long U sound is written with the letter U, it palatalizes the preceding consonant. Here are some examples:

B: Bureau

C: Curate

D: Schedule (I personally think this sounds more like a J than it does a palatalized D)

F: Future

H: Human

M: Music

P: Purify

T: Picture (this sounds more like a CH than an actual palatalized T).

Why is this, and why is it that the other main way to spell this sound (the oo digraph) doesn’t result in such palatalization? Primal Groudon (talk) 13:52, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * For your Why is this? question, Phonological history of English close back vowels may be of interest. Deor (talk) 14:04, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Primal_Groudon -- English doesn't have structural/phonemic palatalized consonants, in the way that Slavic languages do. Instead, there was a sonority shift in a previous [iw] diphthong from a falling diphthong to a rising diphthong (i.e. [ju]), as was discussed quite recently here on the Language Ref. Desk (check the archives).  That's why it's also spelled "eu" and "ew"... AnonMoos (talk) 14:45, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I noticed your edit showed up as an “→‎xx: new section” followed by another edit deleting the xx. Doing this causes it to not appear as a reply to my question when looking at the edit summaries in the page history. There is a reply button at the end of each question and reply. Primal Groudon (talk) 17:36, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I have great problems accessing Wikipedia from home since the stupid December 2019 encryption protocol upgrade. The only way I can do so at all is through an indirect method which is not fully Unicode compliant, so I started a new section so that Deor's "ː" character wouldn't be inadvertently messed up by my adding a reply.  I can go into long boring technical detail on this.  AnonMoos (talk) 22:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Previous thread cited by AnonMoos above is at Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 October 6. Alansplodge (talk) 10:54, 18 October 2023 (UTC)