File talk:喪-bronze.svg

Identification

I wonder if this character can be safely identified as the equivalent of 喪. Compositionally 喪 is the right-hand part; there's an additional component 走 here combining from the left and bottom.

• This glyph appears identical to the one appearing in the Shi Qiang Pan inscriptions (5th column on the left-hand part, 3rd character from the bottom), notorious for its amazing calligraphy and difficult text.
• The Sinica database lists 喪 under kaiOrder 2482, while having ⿺走喪 = 𬦟 under a separate kaiOrder 63556.

A compromise would be to de-highlight the 走 radical in this glyph. (pinging @Micheletb: ) --Frigoris (talk) 14:50, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Frigoris: Hi. Indeed the composition is different, but the general picture represents/evokes the same scene (see fr:wikt:喪 for an etymological description - google translate is probably your friend). Composition variations are quite frequent in bronze characters, and may or may not lead to different characters. As long as it's the same general idea depicted and the same basic meaning, those variations are just graphic/narrative/descriptives variations and need not be entered under separate entries, especially when the corresponding character does not exist in modern (=post-seal) compositions. Furthermore, the point being to explain the etymological generation, composition variations are part of that game, so that it is important that different compositions be related to the same modern character. Do not expect to find a one-to-one correspondence between archaic and modern compositions. De-highlighting is used when the example is taken from a different character (same graph but different/derived meaning). Michelet-密是力 (talk) 17:25, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Micheletb, thanks for the explanation.

I think the problem is exactly that the "basic meaning" of this particular glyph ⿺走喪 appears controversial. It wasn't attested in bronze-script as often as the form ⿱喪亡 (see pic No. B01722 at hanziyuan) or just the one with many crying mouths (口) in a tree-like thing, which can be more safely identified with the later character 喪.

Here's an illustration of what I mean by the "safety" of identification.

• In the Da Yu Ding inscriptions, the last character in the 6th column could be fairly safely read as 喪 (slightly damaged, but clearly without the 走 component), as the surrounding text reads 率肄于酉古喪𠂤已 (roughly, "they all gave themselves in to drinking, therefore they lost their armies"). The phrase 喪𠂤 (> 喪師 in modern form, "to lose [one's] armies; to be wiped out in battle") was highly idiomatic; here 喪 (to lose; to see something perish) can be reduced to a fairly certain "basic meaning".
• In the context of the Shi Qiang Pan the phrase surrounding that character (⿺走喪) was barely comprehensible; the very segmentation of the text into words and phrases were problematic. There have been many "readings" of the character which diverged greatly from each other, with or without the "basic meaning" pertaining to 喪. FWIW, it might well be an early phono-semantic compound (which fell into disuse and obscurity later) with 喪 as the phonetic part without expressing any semantic relation to the "basic meaning" or "general idea" (to lose; to mourn; etc.). That that possibility couldn't be ruled out would render its use in the illustration of etymologies less valuable than a "safer" alternative.

Have you got some resources on the semantics pertaining to this particular character form? --Frigoris (talk) 18:16, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Frigoris: Hello.

• My understanding of Chinese characters is limited to etymologies; I cannot follow you on translations (sorry for my limitations...).
• The 喪 character is initially the same as 咢, which has derived on 噩. You may want to check those ancient (classical chineese) meanings as well. The general-purpose one seems to be 咢 with lots of different meanings (see french wiktionnary where I transcribed them). You may find there interseting suggestions semantically connected, such as "raise an alarm", "blade" (鍔), flower...
• My experience of phono-semantic compounds is that as far as pre-small-seal compounds are concerned, they almost always can be explained by a wide semantical derivation + key added to pinpoint which derivative is meant. The reason the «phonetic» is the same is that the word was the same in the first place, and the derivations of the meanings have made it polysemic (this not being always the case for post-ShuoWen compositions). Rare bronze phonetic borrows are commonly marked by the "mouth" key - «sounds as».

So, for bronze character, a total absence of semantic relation to the primitive meaning can be ruled out. The "semantic" part just adds precision on a largely polysemic word, and in those fuzzy times, the so-called phono-semantic compounds could easily be written alternatively without the so-called semantic part, without losing their meaning (!). Second- or third-generation derivative are generally built just by changing the key, not by adding it as would be more common in post-ShuoWen times, so the semantic chain can be far-fetched and wander through unexpected rare words before you reach the missing link (quite a fun to solve that kind of puzzle, actually).

As for the 喪-bronze picture, it could either be seen as a complex three-component picture (a cadaver 夭, heands hanging from the tree 咢, traces on the ground 止) which just expands the basic picture to designate a slaughter (or a slaughtering state 鄂). Alternatively the 止 can be seen as a semantic key to pinpoint a specific meaning (to flee) which in turn can have mande its own derivatives (for instance, to terrorise).

I may check on 喪 compounds to see if that helps. What is the kind of meaning that would make sense? Michelet-密是力 (talk) 08:55, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello @Micheletb, thank you for your detailed reply.

A/ I was reading the thesis of Ma Aimin (2002, Northeastern Normal University, China) which includes a survey of existing literature on the Shi Qiang Pan, including this character. The tentative readings include the following:

1. phonetically related to 臧, meaning "goodness, merit"
2. as variant form of 噩, meaning "solemn, harsh"
3. as a word semantically related to 走 ("running, running around, exerting")
4. as variant form of 喪, "to lose, to suffer loss"
5. related (possibly in phonology but less so in character-composition) to 爽, meaning "bold, vigorous, robust" (about style, personality, etc.)

The last interpretation was the one favoured by the author after weighing the alternatives and relevant comparanda from historical texts and phonetics.

So the fact is that the glyph here (⿺走喪) as 喪, with the basic meaning "to lose, to mourn, etc", is far from a "safe" identification. Personally I'd feel that the previous upload, i.e the form with an identifiable 亡 component at the bottom, would be a safer choice. That character would be more directly comparable to later forms, such as the clerical script character 喪.

B/ BTW, for phono-semantic compounds in bronze script, those wouldn't have been unfamiliar with the literate community of Western Zhou-era. Plenty of WZ characters such as 楊, 柳, etc., could only make sense as "proper" PSC. Other examples include the variant-form of 光 as 火 (semantic) + 尢 (phonetic) as attested in the Mao Gong Ding, Shi Qiang Pan, etc.; 誨 from the Shi Qiang Pan too; 龢 as often attested in inscriptions on musical instruments; etc. It would be an extraordinary claim that "[s]o, for bronze character, a total absence of semantic relation to the primitive meaning can be ruled out" – unless for very specific values of "total absence" – for which extraordinary evidence would have been required.

C/ Alternatively, it would of course be hypothesized that there were no PSC characters in Western Zhou, and a collection of core characters would have carried a variety of diverse "primitive meanings" that are only sparingly related conceptually if at all, distinguished by semantic components as needed. The problem is that this hypothesis works too well. One may simply add as many "primitive" meanings to a cluster as needed even if these members would have been otherwise unrelated. It works for French too (possibly by the time when most traces of the current generation will have been wiped out by history): hypothetically, "summer" and "a grammatical particle" would have been primitive meanings for the core-glyph-combination été; du has the primitive meanings for both "a quantifier for amount", "a connective word", and "sense related to 'having to do', 'obligation'" – the latter being distinguished by the semantic component "circumflex above u" or "e after u", for a man wearing a hat and a kneeling woman respectively; avoir has primitive meanings of "to have", "to see", and "a grammatical particle", where the component "blank space between a and v" marks the semantic distinction of one of these senses from the others: a window in a wall from which one watches out. --Frigoris (talk) 18:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@Frigoris: Hi, I guess we are discuting several different problems at once, so I added a few bullets and letters to clear my comprehension and facilitate my answer (hope you don't mind).

• Firstly, if the forms attested in bronze-script are «the form ⿱喪亡 (see pic No. B01722 at hanziyuan) or just the one with many crying mouths (口) in a tree-like thing» then it is OK to change to the more frequent form as the reference 喪-bronze.svg, and move the present one as an alternative form (for reference purpose) - I have no information on forms frequencies so I cannot contest that point.

(A)

As for the meaning of [走&喪] in the File:Shi Qiang pan inscription.jpg, my point is that this form and 喪 and 噩 are all derivatives of the [oracle]«many crying mouths (口) in a tree-like thing» whose modern form is 咢, character which has a lot of derivative meanings in classical Chinese. So, with respect to your enumeration of Ma Aimin hypothesis, I would say :

1. ??? what's the link?
2. Yes, 噩 being a known variant of 咢.
3. 走 possible, but there are three components (a cadaver 夭, heads hanging from the tree 咢, traces on the ground 止) and the semantic relationship might alternatively be with 止 alone.
4. My favorite, see 喪 and pick one of its meanings (filtered by 走 or 止 with possible semantical extension, this needs not be an exact match)
5. ??? idem, what's the link? Options 1 & 5 seems to be the result of a search for an alternative character that would make sens in this context, which would be a poor approach...

I've checked for 喪- and 咢 compounds but the only one that goes back to small seal would be 鄂 which is inconclusive. So if your need is to translate [走&喪], the possible alternative meanings are limited to those of 咢. But there are much more classical meanings than just "to lose, to suffer loss".

(B)

My constant experience so far, on those words for which I have detailed a «graphic etymology» section on the fr:wiktionnary, is that the classical (古) meanings given for old characters (attested small seal or earlier) and their "old" compounds (idem) are linked, that is to say: there is always a primitive meaning associated with the base graphic, and semantical simple movements from one meaning to some others, that end up by capturing all meanings given by my "Couvreur" dictionary (with some obvious and irrelevant exceptions on some keys). Since in my experience (so far) the semantical network covers all meanings given for the character and its 古-compounds, my generalization is that indeed, in such cases, «a total absence of semantic relation to the primitive meaning can be ruled out» (challenge accepted on a char...). Mind you, this is not always true for post-ShuoWen constructions.

(C)

Your presentation is unfair. As stated above, the classical meanings are not just any cluster, but a derivation network for which meanings are directly related (if it takes meaning A, then by a known semantical derivation it can take meaning B,...) from one point to the other (the end result may be a cluster with a very large diameter, but this is irrelevant). So there is no reason this hypothesis would work too well, the falsification test is that for graphic etymology purpose, the list of meanings given by the Couvreur reference can (or could not) be ordered in a network - it has worked so far.

On the other hand, the main problem for the PSC hypothesis is that it is too easy and without any possible falsification : when the phonetic is messy you just need to hypothesize a transition in the neighboring country where the word had another translation, or whatever, and voilà, you may be excused. Indeed, common phonology can be proven in some cases (for instance through poetry, etc.) but there is no way to prove that nowhere at any time in Chinese history the readings of two characters has not been similar. The PSC hypothetis is just an excuse to dispense with semantical analysis...

Michelet-密是力 (talk) 10:06, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

@Micheletb, thanks. I think indeed there were many separate issues involved here in the previous discussions. The original problem, identification of this character, remains open. As the focus of the discussions suggest, the problem is largely contingent on the composite nature of the character: Which component/components best identifi/es a/the "core meaning/s"? FWIW, it would have made sense to rename the picture 走-bronze.svg or 止-bronze.svg, according to my understanding of your theory. I think the theory about "core-meaning cluster" is that, it works well, until one out-of-place member-meaning (i.e. one that doesn't cluster well with the other identified "core-meanings" without tortuous artificial connections) gets assigned to a glyph – then it begins to "work too well". This situation may happen when the context forces one's hands. For example, in the Shi Qiang Pan where this character appears, none of the tentative readings listed in my previous message could be well-supported by both the glyph itself and the context. This is a serious issue, because once we consider the meaning of "meaning" as in "meaning-cluster", "primitive meanings", etc., one finds that the concept of meaning cannot stand alone without a surrounding context. In other words, without context, any meanings, and perhaps the very idea of meaning too, lack meaning. You asked why the author of that paper accepted No. 5 as the preferred one. To summarize, the reason is that author believed that the reading, when connected with the preceding and succeeding characters, makes the most meaning with the surrounding context compared with the alternatives. The author also made use of intertextuality in inferring meaning and the very presence of any thereof, by noticing that in similar word-constructs (co-locating words, almost idiomatic expressions) could be found in semantically clearer texts from a later era – which suggests, inconclusively yet in a manner outweighing the alternatively, that No. 5 may be preferred. If you're interested, the connection for this character itself was mostly phonetic: 爽 would have been syllabically related to the hypothesized phonetic component 喪 (爽 may be reconstructable as /*sraŋʔ/ in Old Chinese, and 喪 /*smaŋ/ – the author didn't use such IPA reconstruction but implicitly the syllabic proximity). With the preceding character (interpreted as 遽), the co-locating words 遽爽 "make a lot of meaning" in the corpus of classical texts (up to discrepancy of dating and textual-level issues that typically plague such corpora).

So if I'm allowed to give an suggestion, I'd say, given the controversy surrounding this character-form, if we may find another rendition of 喪 that is less encumbered, we may think about switching to that character form.

BTW, in that article "your favourite" reading (喪) were two separate readings when connected with the preceding character: a) "to die suddenly/to die from acute illness/etc.", and b) "to fear loss; to be concerned about losing/wrongdoing/etc." – those were based on my reading of that paper; to understand the exact meanings I'd have to read the original literature where these readings came from, but that I have trouble doing at the moment. --Frigoris (talk) 18:31, 23 September 2020 (UTC)