Perry Link's An Anatomy of Chinese

[roddy]

Does anyone have this book?*

Apparently it cites my old and much-loved site, Signese.com, and I'm curious as to what it says - probably not much, but I'm curious all the same. Not £20 curious though. And it's the kind of thing someone on here might have:

Particularly provocative is Link’s consideration of how Indo-European languages, with their preference for abstract nouns, generate philosophical puzzles that Chinese, with its preference for verbs, avoids.

That's the kind of thing that generates a twenty-page topic, two storming-outs and a banning on here.

*If not, why not buy it via that handy affiliate link. Go on. I could make literally cents.

[Shelley]

I don't have this book, but I am in the process of cataloguing a very large collection of Chinese books belonging to a very dear friend of mine whose love of Chinese ran to hundreds if not thousands of books.

He unfortunately died last year and I am sorting out his Chinese books for his wife so she can sell them later as she has no interest or knowledge of Chinese.

So it is highly likely i will come across this book and when i do i will let you know.

In the mean time if you search the book on "that" site for the word signese you get this and I quote:

I understand from eyewitnesses (or should we say ear witnesses) 13.12 www.signese.com July 9 2006. Viewed June 21 2012. 13. My source is Professor Hu Ch'ang Tu.

I don't know if this is of any help but there you go

[roddy]

I'd seen that, that's just the citation / footnote, not the passage.

This must be the photo though

http://www.signese.c...1614/#more-1035

Only one posted July 9th, 2006. Don't even remember taking it. Might have been a contribution.

[realmayo]

Ooh I need to fatten up my kindle & I like what I've read by this dude in the past so ... 1-click beckons .....

[realmayo]

Two citations!

Both from a chapter/section called:

The Prevalence of Rhythmic Patterns in Daily-Life Chinese.

[roddy]

Many thanks!

[imron]

I'm impressed that he viewed the second image on June 21 2102

[Shelley]

ooooooooo time travellers

[realmayo]

Signese will outlast all of us it seems....

[roddy]

I think I might try and crowdfund a photo-taking trip to China so I can resurrect the site...

I'll refund the cost of Mr Link's book to the first person to write up a nice long review, by the way.

[realmayo]

.... of Signese.com?

[roddy]

No, the book, silly. Are you reading it? Is it any good?

[realmayo]

Yes, almost finished it, it's good.

I'm not 100% sure what the "point" of the book is : it feels more like this guy has accumulated lots of thinking and ideas and experience about the Chinese language and wanted to share it. Which is fine by me. Someone who has read lots of high-end technical books and articles about the language might not find anything stunningly new here, I don't know, but given that I haven't read many of those kind of books I find lots of it fascinating, and more readable because there's the underlying narrative of a guy who has thought about stuff he is interested in, reckons he's got interesting things to say about them, and says them.

It's in three parts, as per the title: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics.

Rhythm: he writes about how rhythm of a sentence can change the sense you get from it, how the [1-2 1-2-3] or [1-2 1-2 1-2-3] of five-line or seven-line Chinese poetry is reproduced in modern slogans and sayings and gives a nice sense of neatness and authority, as well as other rhythms commonly used. He also writes about the nature of the language itself and how rhythm works within it, the rules that mean certain stresses sound right and others are wrong.

One example: lists like 东南西北 or foreign words like Columbia 哥伦比亚 have a 1-3-2-4 stress (1 being strongest, 4 being weakest).

But 乱七八糟 or 糊里糊涂 are more like 3-1-2-4: he proposes that this is an example of rhythm suggesting "meaning" in a broad sense -- like how the rhythm of a limerick in English 'sounds' jokey, even if the content isn't.

Or how, if Communist leaders want to sound a bit more affectionate towards their colleagues they don't just use 同志 'comrade' plus name, they make sure it turns into a more pleasant-sounding four-syllable address, rather than three. So Deng would be Xiaoping tongzhi naturally, because he's got a two-character given name. But for lovely Li Peng, they wouldn't say Peng tongzhi, but Li Peng tongzhi, to make sure you get the four syllables.

And lots of other interesting stuff about rhythm -- I was often reading aloud the examples and realising that I knew which sounded right and which wrong, but hadn't noticed it before, or didn't know why .... so lots of "ah, yeah..." moments.

Metaphor: the second section, I thought it dragged on a bit in parts to be honest but it's still a worthwhile read. This section includes the 'Chinese uses verbs a lot, English uses nouns a lot' bit which is interesting and gets quite philosophical, e.g. Western philosophers agonise over what "being" or "existence" is, but Chinese ones didn't because if they were thinking about being or non-being they'd use verbs, 有 or 无 -- my summary may make it sound daft but he makes an interesting case. English turns verb into nouns a lot -- "they connect" => "they have connectivity" -- but Chinese doesn't.

So he looks at how this can make some sentences interesting/hard to translate,, e.g. "my fear of insects is driving my wife crazy".

Politics: this section I'm only half-way through, it's something I've often wondered about, how "official" Communist Chinese changes common speech. From what I've read so far he stresses how instead you have two separate languages, one formal, the other normal, and how it would be odd if they crossed over. Also that lots of borrowings from western grammar have occured in the formal area.

So, not mind-blowing but definitely very interesting and thought-provoking. As a non-academic interested in the language, it feels that this books is giving me the fun bits of academic study without having to do any of the hard slog that, I presume, is involved for career-linguists.

Finally, I like how he deals with Chinese within the text: loads and loads of examples, all with characters, pinyin (no tones) and English translation. And -- I don't know if this is common but it seems very smart -- he doesn't choose between simplified or traditional, he simply uses whichever is more appropriate given the context. Oh and I'm not chasing a refund with this short review!

[Lu]

Thanks for that review, that book sounds really interesting, putting it on my list!

[roddy]

There's a further review here, gratitude to the ever-lovely folks at Paper Republic. Did you get it, Lu? It's on my wishlist also.

[Lu]

My wishlist is more of a very-long-term thing I'm afraid. Perhaps I'll ask for it for my birthday next month.

[Lu]

I came across another review, in the WSJ, thought I'd add it here.

[roddy]

I am, thanks to some very precise instructions to Santa Claus, the proud owner of this book. It's joined my reading pile.

[tooironic]

I bought a copy a couple of weeks ago and am about half way through. It's fascinating in parts, not so in others. I like the way he writes, a good balance between academic and accessible IMO. I'll write a more detailed review when I'm finished. One thing that bugs me a little though is the sheer amount of the book which focuses on revolution politics, Mao Zedong, etc. No one would deny it's a major period in Chinese history but it would be refreshing if the author had found more examples which were not so dry and political. Referencing the old Chairman in every other chapter gets old fast, and unfortunately makes the book look slightly dated.

[Lu]

I recently realised I actually have an entire university library of books at my disposal and am now finally reading this book. It's a fun read so far, lots of examples (I agree with realmayo that Link has made some good choices in presenting them), and it makes a lot of sense.

 

Funny thing is, in discussing qiyan (seven-syllable lines) in the introduction, he states that 一看，二慢，三通過 souds better (to the ear of the native speaker) than 大家小心過街啊, because the former is qiyan. It seems he didn't realise the latter looks an awful lot like qiyan too.