How to use this Chinese Marker Dictionary

SUMMARY Principle Ordinary use by students Studying a marker and its neighborhood Marker lookup using its shape

PRINCIPLE Chinese characters can be analyzed in two ways: as a sequence of strokes, which allows one to write them, or as an assembly of elements (部件), from which they are built. The benefit of an approach based on elements is to enable one to account for the influence de each of these elements on the characters in which they appear. Indeed such an element 'marks' them with its influence, which can be phonetic, semantic or purely graphic. Hence the name of 'marker' given to them here. These concepts are well known. Especially some of the so-called 'radicals' do provide a semantic classification for the characters which contain them, e.g. 木 (wood)) ou 鱼 (fish). The distinguishing feature of this dictionary is to systematically account for phonetic influence according to an original statistical method (cf issue 15 of French journal Tôzai).

ORDINARY USE BY STUDENTS As it is today, this dictionary does not replace a Chinese dictionary such as Pleco but brings it a valuable complement. The difficulty faced by the advanced student is to find the entry corresponding to some unknown character. Its pinyin transcription must normally be known: either with a paper dictionary, by identifying its radical and going through two index tables built by counting the number of strokes in increasing order or with the haptic interface of a smart phone dictionary , by using one's finger to reproduce the unknown character more or less faithfully. both methods demanding a high level of attention to details and a bit bothersome to most. With C3S on the contrary, the advanced student can do it in two clicks within four quick steps: recognize a marker of the unknown character, preferably its phonetic marker, for which one can recall the sound it gives to a known character in the sound section of the marker dictionary, click on this sound find the marker concerned in the list of markers which influence this sound and click on its code find the character to be looked up in the list of characters influenced by this marker and read its pinyin sound. e.g. to lookup character 颏 recognize 亥 as its phonetic marker and recall sound 'hai' of well known character 孩 in marker dictionary sound list, click on 'H' find 亥 in the list 害 (Ag-04), 亥 (Ge-01), 不 (Jr-01), 每 (Yk-01), 海 (Yk-03) of phonetic markers for sound 'hai' and click on its code Ge-01 find character 颏 in the list of characters phonetically influenced par 亥 and read its sound 'kē'. This method only requires to know at least one character within the phonetic neighborhood of each marker, but this is the case with advanced students. Notes: in general the lookup is very fast, even if one guesses correctly the pinyin transcription of the character to be looked up, for: the phonetic neighborhood of a marker is always much smaller that the set of characters semantically indexed by a common radical such as 木 for a given sound, markers listed for their phonetic influence are always fewer than the characters going by that sound, for instance 'ke' if in the unknown character one does not recognize a marker with a known character in its phonetic neighborhood, take any of its markers and look it up by its shape.

STUDYING A MARKER AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD A marker is a an element (部件) from which chinese characters are built and is potentially shared among them. Its neighborhood is made of all the characters in which it appears. The benefit for the student is that, in a large majority of cases, the presence of a marker in a character influences its meaning, its pronunciation or both. A marker thus links characters in its neighbothood beyond a mere graphic commonality. As a marker dictionary, C3S (sense, sound and sign) helps character memorization by maximizing these links and optimizing their presentation. Though this dictionary has been developped for pedagogical purposes, it also allows the researcher to compile statistics on the role of markers, especially phonetic influence. The phonetic influence of a marker is mapped by shading phonetic spread background tables common to all markers. the data come from original research and is thus subject to the scientific review of the method adopted and its results. from a pedagogical perspective, the wider a marker phonetic spread, the less informative it becomes, but this phenomenon only concerns a few of the more primitive markers . a feature of phonetic influence is that it can be inherited from marker to marker, when a marker is itself a character in the phonetic neighborhood of another marker. In the list of markers influencing a given sound, C3S underlines this transmission by grouping together the markers concerned, e.g. successively listed under sound 'zheng' are 止, 正 and 征: for 征 (zhēng) is the phonetic heir of 正 (zhèng), itself the phonetic heir of 止 (zhǐ). . however, the representation of semantic influence is not based on a rigorous approach but only expresses the author's personal opinion: besides well known semantic influences, e.g. the radical classifiers 木 or 鱼, the author has recorded the links which seem the most able to trigger his memory. In the future one ought to allow this dictionary to be personalized online by its users to enable everyone, starting with teachers, to create his or her own network of links. . every marker is characterized by a cartouche, which among other data offers a mnemonic sentence with the commonest character whose sound the marker concerned influences. the author freely acknowledges he does not have the experience necessary to optimize the sentences he picked for the present version.

MARKER LOOKUP USING ITS SHAPE Looking up by sound a marker or a character it influences is not always possible, if one does not recall any character in its phonetic neighborhood. In this case C3S provides an index based on the shape of the markers and built along three dimensions: twenty-four families, indexed from A to Z, O and V excluded, each one intuitively unified by the general appearance of its members e.g. family C holds the markers mainly drawn from a vertical stroke crossed by horizontal ones such as 十, 工 and 生 family W holds the markers with a square, more or less squished or deformed such as 口, 台, 言 and 凸 each family can have up to twenty-four members, indexed from a to z, o and v excluded finally each of these members, called primitives, can be the head of a subfamily holding the markers built from the primitive concerned e.g. subfamily Cp holds markers 生, 隆 et 星, whose codes are respectively Cp-01, Cp-02, Cp-03 subfamily Wa holds 36 markers, starting with 口, 呈, 另, 别, 呙, etc..., whose codes are respectively Wa-01, Wa-02, Wa-03, Wa-04, Wa-05 subfamilies Wf and Ws do not contain any other member besides their primitives, respectively 台 (Wf-01) and 凸 (Ws-01) The primitive marker index is displayed on a two-dimensional table, 24x24, one column per family. It is suggested the user develops an intuitive, global mental picture of this table, through close study and experience. To look up a marker by its shape identify in the table the primitive from which it is built (cf Notes) call for the subfamily headed by this primitive by clicking on the family index, which displays all the subfamilies which are headed by the members of this family (only on computers) by moving the mouse on the table and clicking on the primitive concerned click on the subfamily member which is the wanted marker Notes: as a subfamily member is often built from two or more primitive markers, it can be reached from each of them. its encoding therefore includes several synonymous codes, each reflecting a different path used to reach it. e.g. the subfamily member 莫 is known under codes: Na-14 in the subfamily headed by 大 (Na-01) Ra-21 in the subfamily headed by 艹 (Ra-01) Xa-34 in the subfamily headed by 日 (Xa-01) A primitive marker sometimes goes by different shapes when used in composition. if the variation is minimal, it is ignored. For instance marker 土 is recognized to be in marker (and character) 坏 if the variation is visible but obvious, it is encoded under different synonymous primitives. For instance markers 羊(Cs-01), ⺷(Ct-01) and ⺶(Dt-01). if the variation is not obvious without appropriate training, it leads to truly distinct primitives. For instance markers 氵(As-01) et 水(Qg-01). In case of synonymy, the codes with a higher index automatically lead to the lowest index, Ra-21 and Xa-34 lead to Na-14, Ct-01 et Dt-01 lead to Cs-01.

Home