From: scc@rlgvax.Reston.ICL.COM (Stephen Carlson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: 8I8
Date: 8 Apr 92 16:51:10 GMT
Reply-To: scc@rlgvax.Reston.ICL.COM (Stephen Carlson)
Organization: International Computers Limited, Reston, Virginia, USA

In article <1992Apr06.180434.30685@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992Apr02.183047.4547@spss.com> I wonder:
>>How do you know when two Chinese words of identical pronunciation, written
>>differently, are the same morpheme or not?  [...]
>>But on what grounds do you associate these two hu2?  
>
>Tak To has informed me via e-mail what was the basis of his suggestion that
>hu2 "foreign" and the hu2 in hu2die2 "butterfly" might be the same morpheme:
>that hu2die2 is often written in Classical Chinese without the "insect"
>radical, that is, using the first hu2.  I find this very reasonable.
>
>  |     |    +--+    For those who might be interested, the hu2 in hu2die2
>+-+-+  -+-   |__|    looks something like this.  Like most Chinese characters,
>| | |   |    |  |    it's composed of a "meaning" radical (chong2, "insect",
>+-+-+ +-+-+  |--|    the first of the 3 graphemes) and a "phonetic" (hu2,
>  |   |   |  |  |    "foreign", the second two graphemes).  (The phonetic of
>--+-I +---+ /   /    a character may have the same sound, or may rhyme, or
>                     may rhyme only in Ancient Chinese.)
>
>Now, can anyone tell me where the graphic elements of hu2 "foreign" come from?
>If I'm operating my dictionary correctly it's composed of gu3 "ancient" and
>yue4 "moon".  Is that right?  Is this also a radical/phonetic pair?

I've researched this using Gao Benhan's _Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and
Sino-Japanese_, and this description is based on his work.

Hu2 "butterfly" is a phonetic compound.  That is, it is a character which
contains a phonetic portion (in this case, the center and the right
graphemes, hu2) and a signifier (the left grapheme, chong2, "insect").  Thus
is a character that sounds like hu2 with the meaning of "insect."  For this
character, it is none other than hu2, "butterfly."  In fact, the word and
the phonetic still sound similar in Standard Chinese.

Now let's analyze the constituent parts:

The radical, chong2 "insect," is originally a picture of an insect or
reptile.  This is much more obvious when the small seal character is examined.

The phonetic portion of hu2 is itself a phonetic compound.  That character
originally meant the dewlap of the ox, i.e. the fleshy part that hangs down
from the ox's throat.  Later, the sense of the character was transfered to
an abstract, homonymous word, hu2, that means "how?," "why?," or "when?."
Also, since this character has been popular in transcribing certain Turkic
names, it has acquired the meaning of "Turkic."  I presume this is the meaning
of "foreign" that you suggest.  This character's original meaning is the basis
for the phonetic compound.

Hu2 "dewlap" is a phonetic compound whose phonetic element is gu3 "ancient,"
and whose signifier is rou4 "flesh."  (The reduced form of rou4 looks exactly
like yue4 "moon," hence the confusion.)  Thus, hu2 sounds like gu3, with the
meaning of flesh.  Karlgren's reconstructed Archaic Chinese shows the phonetic
similarity to be much closer than in Modern Chinese: hu2 < g'o and gu3 < ko.

Gu3 itself is a logical compound, composed of shi2 "ten" (+) kou3 "mouths"
([]) > "ten generations" > "ancient."  Its constituent parts are symbolic
and pictographic respectively.  Rou4 "flesh" is pictographic: it depicts bits
of meat in a bundle.

-- 
Stephen Carlson           | ICL OFFICEPOWER Center    | In theory, theory and
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