Reflections on the Comparison and Contrast of Chinese with the Western Languages.

One of the main ideas conveyed in Module 1.1 is: in Chinese philosophy, words of language are part of the world (called language isomorphism), while in the West, words are symbols of the world. This difference is reflected in the different need of Ð'ÐŽÐ'osubjectÐ'ÐŽÐ'± of a sentence in two languages. After a team discussion we agree upon this idea, but we have more to say about this difference.

First, these different philosophical approaches toward language reflect different means of language encoding underlying Chinese and the western language. Chinese adopted iconicity in its language encoding. As we know, there is great iconicity between language and the physical world. Chinese as an uninflectional language from a closer point lends support to the iconicity between language and the world. Take the passage cited in WCwCC (p.200) as an example:

Yun shi yu Song wu (Ð""Ð"‰Ð"ЉÐ'ЇÐ""Ð"Ñ™Ð"‹Ð"ЋÐ"ЋÐ"Ґ)

Fall stone at Song five

Five stones fell in Song.

In this sentence, the order of the words exactly corresponded to the order of such an event. According to Pierce (1955/1902), this is one of the diagrammatic iconicities, which is called sequential (or temporal) iconicity. Whereas in the West, logic is adopted in language encoding, which we can see clearly from the English equivalent of the Chinese sentence above.

Second, when these different views on languages are reflected in grammar, it is the different degrees of grammatical requirements of the Chinese and western languages. Since in Chinese, language is part of the world and closely connected with the world, language will be restricted by the world rather than the grammar rules. That is why in Chinese, a single word, a phrase or several nouns put together as in the poem (at the beginning of this module) can form a grammatical sentence, and subject of a sentence is not always necessary. Take an ancient poem written by Ma Zhiyuan of Yuan dynasty as an example:

Ð'Ñ--Ð"ÑœÐ"ЊÐ"™ Ð"ЂÐ"ЏÐ"ЉÐ"* Ð'»Ð"ЁÐ"'Ð'»,

Kuteng laoshu hunya

Withered vine old tree dusk crow

Ð"Ñ'Ð'ÐŽÐ"‡Ð"... Ð"ЃÐ"*Ð"‹Ð'® Ð"?Ð"‹Ð'јÐ"',

Xiaoqiao liushui renjia

Small bridge flowing water house

Ð'â„-Ð"...Ð'µÐ"Ђ Ð"ЋÐ"*Ð'*Ð"§ Ð"ЉÐ"ÑœÐ"‚Ð"­