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muckefuckChinese class on Monday was somewhat...discursive--but for once this wasn't the fault of the ever-changing student contingent. We seem to have settled on a stable one at last: Miss Chen (though she's often away on business), Mr Fei, Mr Yu, and me. But Teacher Liu ranged farther afield than usual, filling the board with terms from Chinese literature and history. She eventually apologised, explaining that traditional Chinese literature was her major and she's been teaching children for so long she never has much opportunity to talk of it. It's fine with me, since this is the whole basis for my interest in the language, but I wonder how those who want to leave with a working touristic knowledge of Mandarin feel.
Not all the digressions were obscure. She also tried to introduce some of the word- and phrase-building resources of Chinese using elements already familiar to us. For instance, we long ago learned the words for major divisions of time (days, weeks, months, etc.), but never the idiomatic expressions for "next week", "last month", etc.--the very idiomatic expressions, as it turns out. "Last month" for instance is 上月. There's nothing in the uses of 上, varied as they are (e.g. "above, upper, superior; ascend; board [a train]; start"), which prepares one for this and I was wondering how best to memorise it. Then the metaphor suddenly became clear.
I know I've gone on about Lakoff's Women, fire, and dangerous things many times in this journal, but it's with good reason. We all know that our speech includes a lot metaphor (much of it supposedly "dead"), but Lakoff does a better job of explicating the forms it takes and how it affects (and is affected by) our interaction with the environment than anyone else I've read. Many of these metaphors are so ingrained that they strike us as "natural" and we don't consider alternatives--until we encountre a language that uses them.
One example he gives [warning! half-assed summary of a discussion you'd be better off reading in full begins here] concerns the orientation of inanimate objects. We're so used to the metaphorical projections of English that it doesn't occur to us that there are other possibilities. We look at a tree and say it's "facing" us; the "back" of it is turned away. The side to our left is its "left" and the side to our right is its "right". How else would you express these relations? Well, a moment's reflection will tell you that there are at least two other ways. Hausa makes use of one: The viewer's orientation, not the mirror image of it, is projected onto the tree. Thus, we are looking at its "back" and its "front" is out of sight to us. Other languages (their names fail me) reverse left and right. After all, if the "face" of the tree is towards us, then its "left" is then opposite of our left, isn't it?
All of this rushed back in a moment when I realised that the Chinese, like us, were also using a linear metaphor for the passage of time, but varying the orientation. For English speakers, the exact dimension is unimportant. Units of time grow nearer and nearer to us until they pass by. Etymologically, the "coming" month is also the "nearest" one*. The month just past is the "latest" (contracted to "last") one. In the Chinese metaphor, this passage has an absolute orientation in space: Units originate 下 or "below" the speaker and rise past her until they become 上 or "above".
Or, at least, some of them do. Just when I was getting used to the idea of time periods floating upwards past my head like balloons, I learned that next year is the 來 or "coming" one and last year the 去 ("departed") one. However, those that have passed by earlier are in front (前年 lit. "front year", i.e. "year before last") and those that have yet to come are behind (後年 "back year", i.e. "year after next"). This may seem odd--aren't we staring into the misty future with "past years" racing behind us into the murky past?--but compare the English equivalents. If last year is really behind us, wouldn't the "year before [i.e. "in front of"] last" be this one? (Also, consider German voriges Jahr, from vor "before, in front of", "last year".) Not all our linguistic metaphors are consistent! Really, how could they be given the sheer number of them?
There was more to come, but I was happy to find when reviewing my flash cards over the past couple days that I've assimilated the new metaphors quickly. Now if only I can have the same success with the uses of 了!
[*] "Near" is actually the comparative of archaic "nigh". The historical superlative was "next". A new comparative and superlative, "nearer" and "nearest", came into existence during the Middle English period.
Not all the digressions were obscure. She also tried to introduce some of the word- and phrase-building resources of Chinese using elements already familiar to us. For instance, we long ago learned the words for major divisions of time (days, weeks, months, etc.), but never the idiomatic expressions for "next week", "last month", etc.--the very idiomatic expressions, as it turns out. "Last month" for instance is 上月. There's nothing in the uses of 上, varied as they are (e.g. "above, upper, superior; ascend; board [a train]; start"), which prepares one for this and I was wondering how best to memorise it. Then the metaphor suddenly became clear.
I know I've gone on about Lakoff's Women, fire, and dangerous things many times in this journal, but it's with good reason. We all know that our speech includes a lot metaphor (much of it supposedly "dead"), but Lakoff does a better job of explicating the forms it takes and how it affects (and is affected by) our interaction with the environment than anyone else I've read. Many of these metaphors are so ingrained that they strike us as "natural" and we don't consider alternatives--until we encountre a language that uses them.
One example he gives [warning! half-assed summary of a discussion you'd be better off reading in full begins here] concerns the orientation of inanimate objects. We're so used to the metaphorical projections of English that it doesn't occur to us that there are other possibilities. We look at a tree and say it's "facing" us; the "back" of it is turned away. The side to our left is its "left" and the side to our right is its "right". How else would you express these relations? Well, a moment's reflection will tell you that there are at least two other ways. Hausa makes use of one: The viewer's orientation, not the mirror image of it, is projected onto the tree. Thus, we are looking at its "back" and its "front" is out of sight to us. Other languages (their names fail me) reverse left and right. After all, if the "face" of the tree is towards us, then its "left" is then opposite of our left, isn't it?
All of this rushed back in a moment when I realised that the Chinese, like us, were also using a linear metaphor for the passage of time, but varying the orientation. For English speakers, the exact dimension is unimportant. Units of time grow nearer and nearer to us until they pass by. Etymologically, the "coming" month is also the "nearest" one*. The month just past is the "latest" (contracted to "last") one. In the Chinese metaphor, this passage has an absolute orientation in space: Units originate 下 or "below" the speaker and rise past her until they become 上 or "above".
Or, at least, some of them do. Just when I was getting used to the idea of time periods floating upwards past my head like balloons, I learned that next year is the 來 or "coming" one and last year the 去 ("departed") one. However, those that have passed by earlier are in front (前年 lit. "front year", i.e. "year before last") and those that have yet to come are behind (後年 "back year", i.e. "year after next"). This may seem odd--aren't we staring into the misty future with "past years" racing behind us into the murky past?--but compare the English equivalents. If last year is really behind us, wouldn't the "year before [i.e. "in front of"] last" be this one? (Also, consider German voriges Jahr, from vor "before, in front of", "last year".) Not all our linguistic metaphors are consistent! Really, how could they be given the sheer number of them?
There was more to come, but I was happy to find when reviewing my flash cards over the past couple days that I've assimilated the new metaphors quickly. Now if only I can have the same success with the uses of 了!
[*] "Near" is actually the comparative of archaic "nigh". The historical superlative was "next". A new comparative and superlative, "nearer" and "nearest", came into existence during the Middle English period.
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no subject
Equally the 'front year' and 'behind' year are in front of and behind other characters, not in front of or behind the obsever - ie, you have a series of characters passing you
[<-up]....A B C D E...[->down]
If you are in year C, D is 'coming' towards you, and B is 'departed' past you; but then A is 'in front of' B (there is an implication that you can still see B, but can't see A past it?), and E is 'behind' the approaching D.
That seems to be internally consistent to me, and it would make sense that a language which has had a written form for as long as Chinese would be affected by that in its use of metaphor.
no subject
If a character were really "behind" another character, you wouldn't be able to read it, would you? Characters on the same page can only be to the left, right, above, or below the other characters. Describing some as "in front" or "behind" results from the application of a the metaphor; it can't be the source of one. Given a string of items, there are rationales for making either end the "front". If you think of yourself as standing within on atop the current item, then the items immediately to either side could both be equally well described as being "in front of" the items that are "further away". That is, from C, both B could be "in front of" A and D could be "in front of" E simultaneously!