ChenZheChina > 01-10-2018, 08:50 AM
(28-09-2018, 11:49 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hello Zhe (I hope that's right),
I am assuming that Cantonese and Mandarin derive from a common ancestor, but even this I could not find, let alone when this was.
I also heard that the tones were introduced at some point in the past, and I have no information how long ago that was.
(28-09-2018, 11:49 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am almost fluent in Thai, and this language has had an alphabet since the 15th Century.
The syllable structure is not quite as consistent as Chinese.
ChenZheChina > 01-10-2018, 09:15 AM
(01-10-2018, 07:57 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems to me that Chinese works rather well in an aspect I am particularly interested in: reduplication.
In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I find 27 instances of exact reduplication:
guāiguāi
tiāntiān
děngděng
cuìcuì
tiāntiān
gūlū gūlū,
bǎ bǎ
báibái
bèngbèng
xiǎoxiǎo
jǐnjǐn
jiànjiàn
tiáotiáo
yīngyīng
tōutōu
chángcháng
wāwā
mànmàn
xìxì
tōutōu
qiāoqiāo
shēnshēn
zǒuzhe zǒuzhe,
mànmàn
hǎohǎo
dìdì
yuǎnyuǎn
The frequency of exact reduplication appears perfectly compatible with what is observed in the Voynch ms.
Is this pinyin text something you can easily read and understand? If so, could you please explain the meaning of some of these occurrences of reduplication?
ReneZ > 01-10-2018, 11:15 AM
ChenZheChina > 02-10-2018, 11:10 AM
(01-10-2018, 11:15 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The list of consonants and vowels given above is the main argument for similarity between Voynich text and modern Chinese. The majority of consonants appear only at the start of syllables.
Syllables have a rigid structure, to such an extent that one can make a one-page table giving all possible patterns.
(01-10-2018, 11:15 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.With Voynichese, there is a strong suspicion that the units of the language (or writing) are not just the symbols we see, but are combinations of symbols.
(01-10-2018, 11:15 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The number of patters is also restricted. Trying to match Voynichese to Mandarin may not be too useful, because we need to look at languages from 600 years ago.
(01-10-2018, 11:15 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The point I made earlier, related to the similarity between Voynichese o- and qo- to Chinese yi 一 was mainly prompted by examples such as on this page:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
There are lists of items being ordered, mainly preceded by 一个 (yi gè).
I could imagine that in recipes such frequent use of yi and a classifier word might be expected.
MarcoP > 02-10-2018, 12:34 PM
ChenZheChina > 03-10-2018, 04:19 AM
(02-10-2018, 12:34 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.From these examples, it seems clear that reduplication is systematically used to generate words. In this text, the most frequent case seems converting an adjective into an adverb, e.g.
mànmàn 慢慢 “slowly”
where màn means "slow"
At least one case seems to involve duration:
zǒuzhe zǒuzhe 走着走着 “while walking”
ReneZ > 03-10-2018, 05:31 AM
ChenZheChina > 03-10-2018, 07:55 AM
(02-10-2018, 12:34 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about Voynichese prefixes being problematic when compared with Chinese are also relevant to this subject: it could very well be that there are other cases (not at line boundary) where exact reduplication is transformed into quasi-reduplication by the alteration of one of the two words in the pair.
Is pseudo-reduplication something that happens in Chinese? I.e. is it possible that instead of the exact repetition of a word (X becoming XX) one of the two occurrences is modified in the process (for instance resulting in something like pXX, XpX, XXp)?
MarcoP > 04-10-2018, 09:25 AM
(03-10-2018, 07:55 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I’m not sure whether we could compare Chinese words with reduplication or quasi-reduplication to Voynichese words, because Chinese is written hanzi-by-hanzi, or syllable-by-syllable. But, yes, words with structures like ABB, AAB or AABB do exist. Search “叠词” for examples.
ChenZheChina > 04-10-2018, 09:56 AM
(04-10-2018, 09:25 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If I understood correctly Zhe's discussion of Chinese reduplication and pseudo-reduplication, my impression is that Chinese is not compatible with what we can observe in Voynichese. For instance:Yes, I think you got it. Unless we can say EVA-q is a syllable, there will be a huge gap between Chinese reduplication and Voynichese reduplication.
- q- does not behave as a syllable, but as a modifier of 'o': it almost exclusively occurs as 'qo-'. But quasi reduplication in Chinese involves the addition of a whole syllable.
- q- almost appears to be a "reduplication marker". Whatever the reason for the correlation of q- with exact reduplication and quasi-reduplication, nothing similar happens in Chinese.
(04-10-2018, 09:25 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One more question about Chinese. Voynichese also presents three or more exact or slightly altered repetitions of the same word. For instance:
<f89r2.P1.3;H> toy.daiin.daiin.daiin.ody.qokeey.cheoldy.qody.cheor.s.ain.daiin.oky.cheody.cheoky=
<f95r1.P.8;H> olkor.chdaiin.chol.kaiin.qokeedy.qoky.chedy.lchedy.chedy.alod-
I count 9 occurrences of a single word being exactly repeated three times and 1 occurrence of the same word repeated four times (the famous You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
If one allows for slight alterations (as in the f.95r1 examples above), the numbers increase according to how one defines "quasi-repetition". I think that significant quasi-repetitions with three consecutive occurrences averagely appear once in 1000 words and possibly more.
Are word repetitions with 3 or more occurrences something that is observed in Chinese too?