Harappan 'non-texts'?

[Stephen Hodge]

DrWitzel wrote:
(NB: Chinese characters did change several times, and not just in
their individual shapes. That can be found in any Chin.101 book. Most
glaring, the simplicifation of the "radicals", from, as I recall, c.
500-odd to just 214!).
**********
How so ?  Though not a Sinologist per se, I can read Chinese quite
well and do not find this is the case.   The "simplification" of the
radicals was purely for classificatory purposes.  In fact, the Kang-xi
214 list has been further reduced by modern Cinese lexicographers but
this does in no way affect the structure or meaning of the characters.


>  The Chinese script of 300 BCE is not that of 300 CE!
********
But it is !!   For example, I have a facsimile text of the Dao-de-jing
from the (slightly later) 160 BCE Mawangdui tombs which I can read
just as well as a medieval printing of the text.  By 300 BCE the
writing of Chinese had in fact largely stabilized but each era had its
preferred calligraphic style but this again does not intrinsically
affect the structure or meaning of the majority of characters -- no
more than writing roman script in "gothic" black letter or italic
does.   There was no wholesale changing and replacement of
characters -- though of course some dropped out of use and quite a few
new ones came in use additionally but not the bulk of the script.
On the other hand, it is true that the language / grammar does change.
Classical Zhou period Chinese is very different to much of late Han
/Jin period stuff onwards but the writing remains the same.   One
interesting feature is the shift to using many binomes largely in
order to cope with the linguistic challenges that arose when the
Chinese attempted to translate Indic Buddhist texts.  There is also a
corresponding increase in colloqialisms but even today some scholars
can write in pure classical style which is fairly widely understood by
reasonably educated people.

> All of this quite part from the fact that N/S Chinese differ even in
the 'collocations' of characters that they use, because their
languages differ more than the Romance languegs from each other. --
Same in the Indus.
*********
For most of written Chinese, the N / S divide is not relevent -- there
has always been a official / standard form of written Chinese that
ignores regional dialects and grammar -- that's why standard Chinese
used to be called Mandarin Chinese.  In fact it is often not possible
even to express regional dialects in written Chinese -- dialectical
lexicography has only really begun in recent years using other forms
of representation (IPA etc).


One final point.   With so-called mono-syllabic languages like
Chinese, there is only a limited number of word shapes that can be
generated.  Thus with Chinese, the permutations result in around 420
odd possible "words" in modern Chinese that are then amplified by the
use of tones (4 in Putonghua standard Chinese) thus yielding a
theoretical total of just 1600 words !!   The result is thousands of
homonyms -- hence the use of binomes.  I am not suggesting that the
language of the  IV script is related to Chinese but if the script
worked on a syllabic basis as with Chinese words you might expect
around 400 -- 600 signs.   One finds a similar situation with Tibetan
which is also basically a "mono-syllabic" language -- a fairly limited
number of word-shapes and lots of homonyns.


Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge