Social changes through the lens of language: A big data study of Chinese modal verbs

Leech’s corpus-based comparison of English modal verbs from 1961 to 1992 showed the steep decline of all modal verbs together, which he ascribed to continuing changes towards a more equal and less authority-driven society. This study inspired many diachronic and synchronic studies, mostly on English modal verbs and largely assuming the correlation between the use of modal verbs and power relations. Yet, there are continuing debates on sampling design and the choices of corpora. In addition, this hypothesis has not been attested in any other language with comparable corpus size or examined with longitudinal studies. This study tracks the use of Chinese modal verbs from 1901 to 2009, covering the historical events of the New Culture Movement, the establishment of the PRC, the implementation of simplified characters and the completion and finalization of simplification of the Chinese writing system. We found that the usage of modal verbs did rise and fall during the last century, and for more complex reasons. We also demonstrated that our longitudinal end-to-end approach produces convincing analysis on English modal verbs that reconciles conflicting results in the literature adopting Leech’s point-to-point approach.

Chinese characters have increased in visual complexity over three millennia

Linguistic systems, be they spoken, written, or signed, are hypothesised to be shaped by pressures towards communicative efficiency that drive processes of simplification. A longstanding illustration of this idea is the claim that the characters of the Chinese writing system have progressively simplified over time. Here we test this claim by analyzing a dataset with more than a million images of Chinese characters spanning more than 3,000 years of recorded history. We find no consistent evidence of simplification through time, and contrary to popular belief we find that modern Chinese characters are higher in visual complexity than their earliest known counterparts. A plausible explanation for our findings is that simplicity trades off with distinctiveness, and that characters have become less simple because they have increased in distinctiveness over time. Our findings are therefore compatible with functional accounts of language but highlight the diverse and sometimes counterintuitive ways in which linguistic systems are shaped by pressures for communicative efficiency.

Will a character based writing system stop Chinese becoming a global language? A review and reconsideration of the debate

Whether China’s rise means Chinese becomes a global language like English is a much discussed topic. Most academics and media commentators argue its character based writing system will prevent this because it is difficult and time consuming to learn. In this article I present four counter arguments informed by an analysis of the language practices, language ideologies and language planning surrounding the Chinese writing system and the characteristics of contemporary global English. Firstly, I argue this view is based on the flawed assumption that all learners of Chinese must learn to read and write, and must do so to a native-like level. This does not reflect the global use of English, as not everyone can read and write, and certainly not to a native-like level. People learn as much English as is required for their purposes, and the same would apply if Chinese was a global language. Next, I argue this view ignores the use of devices like computers and mobile phones which convert Pinyin Romanisation into characters, meaning learners need only learn Pinyin and character recognition, saving considerable time and effort. Thirdly, I show there is a historical precedent for the adoption of characters outside of China in the form of the long-standing use of written Chinese for scholarly and official purposes in Korea, Japan and Vietnam. This occurred due to China’s status as the most powerful country in the region, if not the world, and demonstrates people will learn and use characters if there is sufficient reason to do so. Finally, I argue this view focuses excessively on linguistic properties. The inconsistencies and irregularities of English’s writing system show linguistic properties do not determine whether a language becomes global. I conclude a character based writing system will not, in and of itself, prevent Chinese attaining global language status.

Architecture of Japan - Middle (Kofun-Nara)

In present Japanese periodization, the Kofun to Nara periods are bookended by the emergence of monumental tumuli across the Japanese archipelago in the 4th century and the abandonment of the short-lived “permanent” capital, Nagaoka-kyō, to the newly established Heian-kyō (present day Kyoto) in 794. The period generally corresponds to the rise of the Yamato polity in the 4th and 5th centuries. The “Great Kings” of Yamato amassed allies and campaigned to subjugate the “barbarians” to the north and south of the archipelago, while organizing diplomatic missions to the kingdoms and dynasties on the Korean peninsula and China. In 663, it dispatched the first organized military expedition across the sea to fight alongside Baekje against the combined forces of Silla and Tang, suffering a monumental loss. Since then, Yamato spearheaded active adoption and implementation of Chinese-style polity, eventually succeeding in establishing a planned city and administrative structure in Heijō-kyō (710–784). Through the latter half of the 7th into early 8th centuries, the educated elites increasingly gained proficiency in the Chinese writing system, as the first phonetic system of representing Japanese developed. The period was also when Buddhism was embraced and disseminated, and the mythological origins of the Great Kings (later “emperors”) and their powerful allies were established, providing new philosophical foundations that defined and legitimized their political authority. In short, Kofun-Nara was a dynamic incipient period of state formation, which required massive construction projects from tombs, temples, and shrines, to gridded cities. What remains still standing, however, are just a handful of examples. The scholarship on architectural history of this period, thus, inevitably overlaps with archaeology. Due to ongoing robust excavation projects and advancement in scientific technology, any study of this period is now quickly surpassed by new research. Unfortunately, there are not enough scholars working in this field outside of Japan to keep up with the rate of new discoveries published each year in Japanese. Ancient Japanese art and architectural history remains one of the fields with the greatest gap between what research is available in Japanese and any Western language. The intent of this list is to introduce a selection of foundational studies in English (with few accessible Japanese works to supplement), which can serve as a springboard for future research in other languages for interested students and scholars.

THE CHINESE ‘IDEOGRAPHIC’ SCRIPT: EVOLUTION OF PERCEPTIONS (BASED ON THE 19TH CENTURY AUTHORS)

The article explores briefly the history of research in one of the most arguable topics in Sinological linguistics — the definition of an ideographic script, i. e. the Chinese writing system perceptions in the Russian and Western sinology of the 19th century. J.-F. Champolion’s and T. Young’s discoveries of the nature of hieroglyphic script, its function and evolution, as well as their decipherment of the ancient Egyptians texts, naturally influenced the broad field of oriental linguistics, having stimulated researches of other hieroglyphic writing systems. The present article touches briefly upon works of the American scholars P. DuPanceau and S. Andrews, the British naturalist G. T. Lay, the French diplomat J.-M. Callery and the well-renowned Russian sinologists I. Bičurin and V. P. Vasilyev. Basing on the selection of works, relevant to the article’s subject matter, the author aims to illustrate the evolution of Sinological knowledge in one of its most arguable topics — the nature hieroglyphic script, its structure and modification over time. Selected passages from the above mentioned authors, their exchange of opinions and comments to each other’s works tend to demonstrate the development of the research methodology itself — the gradual shift from labelling the Chinese script with ideographic stamp to the recognition of its phono-semantic dimensions and its transformation towards a phonetic system of writing.

Arabic and Roman Numbers as Part of Chinese Semiotic System

The role of Roman and Arabic numbers in the Chinese semiotic system was analyzed. It was found that the use of Roman numbers in the Chinese language is extremely restricted: they only occur in official documents executed in accordance with the Western traditions and in some educational editions, which is due to the fact that the functions of Roman numerals are commonly carried out by the Chinese characters belonging to the traditional Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches sets. On the contrary, Arabic numbers are widespread. They originated in India and penetrated into China at the third attempt in the early 20th century. The failures of the first two attempts are explained by such fundamental differences of the Chinese writing system from the Western one as the direction of the text (down from the top and right to left) and the multiplicity of writing. With the Chinese language reforms, Arabic numbers were introduced in Mandarin. Having penetrated into the Chinese semiotic system, Arabic numbers became so widespread that a state standard was produced to regulate their co-existence with the traditional Chinese characters of numbers. Besides, Arabic numbers have acquired another important function in the Mandarin semiotic system over the last twenty years: they replace characters in the sphere of Internet and mobile-phone interaction. However, in contrast to other numbers in Mandarin, Arabic numbers, as mathematical signs, are devoid of the status of lexical units. Therefore, despite their extensive use, the functions of Arabic numbers in Mandarin are strictly limited.