Subject: Re Liu's numbers for Chinese phonetics

From: Stanley G Goertzen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1993 00:01:00 -600

Hello CCNETers,

Christian Wittern <[email-masked]> wrote to
[email-masked]  on Wed, 6 Oct  1993 19:58:37 JST, regarding input
tables for Chinese software based on Professor Liu's numbering scheme:

>0001 ba1
>0002 ba2
>0003 ba3
>0004 ba4
>0005 ba5
>0006 bo1
>0007 bo2
>0008 bo3
>0009 bo4
>0010 bo5
>0011 bai1
>....
>2050 yun5
>2051 yong1
>2052 yong2
>2053 yong3
>2054 yong4
>2055 yong5
>
>...after  some  revision, I  believe  this  system  could  be  used  for
>internally represent the input-tables of Chinese software, thus laying a
>layer of abstraction  between the  phonetics and  the actual  keystrokes
>used for  inputting these phonetics.  This would easily  allow even  for
>user-modified inputkey-tables, given  everybody the  shortcuts he  likes
>and finds convenient on his keyboard.

If I understand the logic here,  ba1 is associated with 0001 and  0001 is
associated with all the Hanzi pronounced ba1, so that

ba1 -> 0001 -> all Hanzi pronounced ba1

but if I  wished to us Wade-Giles, all I  would have to do is  change the
inputkey-table so that

pa1 -> 0001

and the association XXXX -> Hanzi would remain constant.

>One  could even think of similar tables developed for reconstructions of
>archaic and ancient spellings and relate them to the characters, so that
>old and obsolete pronunciations could be as easily used and looked up as
>todays pinyin.  I believe this  is a better  way for  representing these
>phonetics than building a  font of its own (and thus  a code of its own)
>for rhyme  dictionaries like qieyun  or guangyun, as  somebody suggested
>here some while ago.

If I  understand correctly, there are a total of 2055  syllable types  in
Mandarin  Chinese, beginning with 0001, ba1, and ending with 2055, yong5.
That seems high, but tone 5 (which I'm guessing might be associated  with
entering tone words?) might be the reason for this.

By some estimates,  the Guangyun has  about 3875  syllable types and  the
number of unique archaic  syllables may be higher.  If  I wanted to input
ancient  (Guangyun) or archaic  Chinese I'd probably need  an input table
with over 4000  numbers, since many syllables which are  homophones today
were pronounced differently in the past.  For example:

Mandarin  Ancient   Archaic   Definition
--------  -------   -------   ------------------------------
shi2      zjy@p     djy@p     ten; decade.  十
shi2      dzhjy@k   dhjy@k    eat; attrition, eclipse. 食
shi2      zjyEEk    djyak     rock, stone.   石
shi3      sji       sjy@r     arrow.  失
shi3      sji@      sjyaar    swine, pig.  豕
shi3      sri       sly@g     historian, recorder; history. 史
shi4      dzhji     dhjy@r    signify, show, indicate. 示
shi4      zi        djy@r     look, see, regard.   视
shi4      zji@      djyaar    tribe, clan.   氏
shi4      zji@      djyeg     this; to be right.  是
shi4      dzhri     dzhr@g    officer, gentleman, scholar.  士
shi4      sjy@k     sjy@k     polish, adorn, ornament. 饰

I'd need  a separate number  for each of  these words since there  are no
homophones in Archaic Chinese.  I'm not sure, though, if I'd ever want to
access  Chinese characters in  a word processor using  ancient or archaic
pronunciations.  But if I  did, I would probably revise the  sequence and
use the same order as in the Guangyun.

Still, there are over 26,000 rhyme words in the Guangyun,  more than any
current standard  (except for CCCII), so there would  still be many Hanzi
characters associated with numbers which I could not access.  There might
even be some numbers for which there are not any characters at all in the
current standards.

Maybe I didn't understand what Christian was proposing, but I don't think
it would be worthwhile to increase the numbers in the input table just so
that there would  be a unique number for each  unique ancient and archaic
syllable.   Moreover,  phonologists still disagree as to how  ancient and
archaic  Chinese   was  pronounced,  so  getting  a  consensus  might  be
impossible anyway.

Otherwise, I like the idea of allowing  the user to change from Pinyin to
Wade-Giles, or whatever input method he/she might prefer.

Regards,

Stan
[email-masked]