The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[chenxiang]

what the first character of the next word is depends mainly on semantics ... "remote effect" in Chinese [comes from] is grammatical structure, with clear semantic boundaries.

As I pointed out in my previous message, the point is that there are marked short- and long-range non-trivial statistical dependencies between hanzi in Chinese texts, including in the Shennong Bencao.  

Yes they are due to semantics: common multiple-hanzi phrases that may or may not be tied to the topic of the text, and common grammatical constructs. And that is why those "remote effects" are seen in the VMS, even in other sections besides the SPS.

Tone sandhi: Chinese has tone sandhi for "一" (yi) and "不" (bu), but this is strictly limited to the immediately following syllable (adjacent), and is absolutely never affected by prefixes several words prior (such as the hypothetical affixes "sh", "ch").

Wikipedia says that tone sandhi in Mandarin is much more pervasive.  In addition to those two cases,

• When there are two 3rd tones in a row, the first one becomes 2nd tone. E.g. 你好 (nǐ + hǎo > ní hǎo)You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  
• The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is pronounced at different pitches depending on what tone it follows.
  

Are these statemenrs wrong?

And I read somewhere that the first rule applies to multiple syllables. That is, nǚ zǐ rǔ would be pronounced nǘ zí rǔ.  Is that true?

Even these tone sandhi effects between adjacent syllables could explain "remote effects" in a phonetic transcription, depending on how tones are encoded.  

In the "numeric" version of pinyin (also used for Cantonese jyutping and other phonetic systems for other languages), the tone is indicated by a digit at the end of the letter.  Thus the Wikipedia rules above would be

• A syllable that would normally end with '3'  changes its ending to '2'  if the next syllable ends in '3'. 
  
• For certain common syllables, their final digit will be the same as that of the previous syllable.
  

The position of the tone digit in this version of pinyin is arbitrary.  It could be placed at the start of the syllable, or anywhere inside it, and it would still be understood.  And the placement would not have to be consistent.  Thus the "remote effect" could be between the syllable-initial symbols rather than syllable-final symbols;

But there is another way to encode Mandarin tones, which is to assign digits 1-3 to pitch levels (low, medium, high) and use them to indicate the tone profile.  For example, hǎo could be written 2ha1o3 (or 213hao, or ha213o, or any of many other ways).  

In this notation, one can also omit the pitch digits when they don't change. For example fú zhī qīng shēn bù could be written 1fu3 2zhi qing shen2 3bu1 or even 1fu3 zhi qing shen 3bu1  I suspect that the Vounichese letters a, o, y may be encoding tones this way.

In this notation, tone sandhi can have effect over several syllables. 

Counter-evidence: If a Chinese text describing different plants has character sequence statistics that do not vary with the type of plant (semantic content), but are strongly constrained by prefixes like "sh", "ch", "k", etc., spanning multiple characters to determine the probability of the subsequent "q(o)", then this book is absolutely not a natural language botanical monograph, but can only be an encrypted text or generated pseudo-text.

See again the first recommendation in my previous post... 

does this "remote effect" mean the clue "daiin = 主" is completely dead too?

As explained above, definitely not. 

But note that not every daiin means 主, just as not every "shi" means teacher (or stone, or lion, or whatever).  

It is the other way around: as far as  I have checked, a 主 in the SBJ corresponds in the SPS to a daiin or one of its few recognized variants.

All the best, --stolfi

Dear Professor Jorge

Thank you for sharing the last-to-first.txt file and for bringing up the tone sandhi examples. You are right to point out that my previous statement ("Chinese absolutely does not have this kind of long-distance dependency") was too absolute in a statistical sense. I appreciate the correction and the data.

However, I would like to clarify a crucial linguistic distinction between what your data shows in Chinese and what we observe in the VMS.

First, regarding your Pinyin data: it is true that adjacent syllables in Chinese show statistical tendencies (e.g., a syllable ending in 'g' is often followed by one starting with 's'). However, this is a phenomenon of adjacent phonetic assimilation and high-frequency word collocations (词汇搭配), not a grammatical or structural dependency. In Chinese, the influence of a syllable's final sound strictly applies to the immediately following syllable within the same phrase. It does not extend across word boundaries to mechanically govern the distant structure of an unrelated word.

Second, regarding tone sandhi (变调): the "ní hǎo" example is a localized phonological rule where the adjacent syllable triggers a tone change. It is an intra-phonological process, not a "long-distance effect." In the VMS, as JoJo_Jost and others have shown, the sh/ch at the end of a word strongly affects the qo at the beginning of the next word, across spaces and punctuation. This kind of mechanical, cross-boundary, long-range statistical dependency is not a feature of natural Chinese syntax or phonology.

To put it simply: natural Chinese relies on semantics and adjacent phonetic co-articulation, not on a statistical algorithm that blindly dictates the first letter of the next token based on a prefix several characters prior.

Therefore, while your data demonstrates that Chinese is not statistically random at the syllable level, it actually reinforces the fact that the VMS's mechanical dependencies are atypical of natural Chinese. It points more towards a constructed system or a complex cipher layered on top of a phonetic source, rather than a direct dictation of natural Chinese.

Best regards,
Chenxiang

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As far as I can tell from a look online, the older system did not divide the ecliptic into 24 equal parts. It divided the year into 24 parts of just over 15 days each. 

But this doesn't really change that much with regards to that fact that there was a 24 * ~15 system.

Exactly.  I previously retracted the claim that the VMS "things" (label+star+nymph groups) are Babylonian degrees (which would have implied a division of the Ecliptic rather than the year). 

I have also suspended the claim that the Chinese explicitly divided every solar term interval into 15 parts (which would each be a 365.25/369 = ~1.01458 days, and would be the meaning of the VMS "things"), because I could not find a detailed description of the system that could have said so.  Maybe @chenxiang can help me find it?

All the best, --stolfi

Dear Jorge,

I saw your request regarding whether there is a detailed description in Chinese texts of dividing every solar term interval into 15 parts. I would be happy to help clarify this.

To be direct: No, such a system does not exist in traditional Chinese astronomy or calendar literature.

While the number 15 is extremely significant in Chinese culture (e.g., 15 days per solar term, 15 minutes per quarter-hour), ancient Chinese calendars never divided the ~15 days of a solar term into 15 equal "things" or units.

Here is how Chinese calendar systems actually divided time:

Time of day: A day was divided into 12 "shíchen" (时辰, double-hours). Each shíchen was divided into 8 "kè" (刻, quarters). Each kè was divided into 15 "fēn" (分, minutes). (Note: historically, this was often a 100-kè system per day).

Solar terms (节气): There are 24 solar terms in a tropical year. They are determined by the sun's ecliptic longitude (定气) or by simply dividing the tropical year into 24 equal parts (平气).

However, dividing the year into 24 equal parts (平气) is mathematically very different from dividing a single solar term (a time span of roughly 15 days) into 15 equal sub-units. There is no classical text that supports the idea of mapping the VMS "things" (the label+star+nymph groups) to a 1.01458-day unit (365.25/369). That calculation feels like modern numerology rather than historical precedent.

If you want to look for authentic Chinese timekeeping, I suggest looking into the "100-kè system" (百刻制) of the Han dynasty, or the traditional timekeeping system of 12 shíchen, 8 kè, and 15 fēn. These are the actual frameworks of ancient Chinese time, not a 15-part division of a solar term.

Best regards,
Chenxiang