Lecture 5 the Chinese Cultural Spirit in Chinese language,
Literature and Art
本专题旨在使学生对中国文化精神生产中中国人文精神与语言、全面的认识。通过中西文化比较把握中国传统文化的独特性。化宏观特征有较详解得了解：
人文传统与科学精神、
文学和艺术的关系有一个较学生要通过对比对中国精神文
天人合一与物我
群体认同与个人本位、
二分、关注此岸与关注彼岸等等。场依附性语言与场独立性语言、
本专题包括中西语言、思维比较，如意合语言与形合语言、悟性思维与理性思维、
模糊思维与明细思维、
直觉思维与逻
辑思维、实践理性与思辨理性等等。本专题通过中西文学艺术宏观比较，引导学生发现中国
美学观念在艺术表现倾向的不同及文化意蕴上的差异，心物感应与模仿现实、奔放冲突的审美等等。
如中国神化与希腊神话、写意与写实、
重视团圆和谐的审美与张扬
重意境的抒情传统与重叙事的史诗传统、
I. Language
Every very language has its special way to perceive the objective world and dissect the world differently. Therefore, a language can be taken as a mirror of the culture that demonstrates the character of the people who use the language.
Chinese are quite different from other languages in the way of combining form and meaning. But most of the Chinese people do not really see themselves clearly in the mirror as they do not consciously compare their language with others. Let's take Western languages as a comparative reference.
We will focus on English as an epitome
In many ways,
[i'pit?mi; e-] of the Western language as it is the most popularly spoken Western tongue in the world at present time and embodies most the necessary elements for discussion.
Chinese Language
There are at least two perspectives to look at languages, linguistic perspective and cultural perspective. From the surface, we find that Western languages have a shared feature, that is, a great number of inflectional variations to indicate time, aspect, gender, number and case of words, as well as structural relationships in word combination. Therefore, Western linguists take form as their central concern.
In contrast, Chinese
lacks inflectional variations which show clear grammatical categories and relations. A Chinese linguist and translator L
Shuxiang(1988) once humorously remarked, \ü
Chinese people have no admiration for the intertwined grammar. We find it extremely in- convenient to have these pigtails on our head; A bald head is much better.\is much better\
meaning, but not those based on inflectional form. Therefore, Chinese grammatical
analysis should not start from form, but should take the expression of meaning as the point of departure.\helpful to reveal the nature of Chinese language.
Chinese language is different from the Western Languages in many aspects. This can be traced to its cultural roots such as world views, mode of thinking, aesthetic habits, etc. Gu Hongming explained, \is also a language of the heart.\persons among foreigners in China learn Chinese very easily, much more so than grown-up and educated persons.\and uneducated persons think and speak with the language of the heart while educated men, especially men with the modern intellectual education of Europe, think and speak with the language of the head and intellect. They cannot learn it well because they are too intelligently and scientifically educated. But Gu Hongming also admitted that Chinese is also a difficult language to learn, especially when a learner wants to master classical Chinese written language.
Chinese language is a monosyllabic language in nature, though it started obvious disyllabic trend in the beginning of the last century. Chinese text with dominant disyllabic words can be reduced to one full of monosyllabic words when necessary.The monosyllabic feature of Chinese is a critical factor that influences the development of certain peculiarities of Chinese literary style, such as Chinese poetry, traditional Chinese opera, and others. Lin Yutang said, \possible to trace how much of the peculiarities of Chinese thought and literature are due simply to their possession of a so-called monosyllabic language.\such a point of view? He observed the independent reality of written language based on the monosyllabic words, not having to obey the laws of any spoken language, and in time, it had its own laws of structure and a store of idiom which accumulated by literary accidents of different dynasties(such as the essays of pre-Qin period, of Pian Wen requires using antithesis, allusion, flowery words and so on],
Han Fu[The writing
Tang poetry,
Song ci [a type of classical Chinese poetry, originating in the Tang Dynasty and fully developed in the Song Dynasty, Originally
ci were written to be sung to a specific tune of
that title, with set rhythm, rhyme, and tempo. However, over time the actual tunes seem to have disappeared (similarly to the case of the English ballads], opera verses of Yuan Dynasty, Yuan drama's notable
qu form was set to music). Traditional Chinese literature
and culture is based on Classical Chinese. Even modern Chinese people cannot completely part with classical Chinese because it has the root or spirit of Chinese language and culture. Chinese is much Westernized since the New Culture Movement
started in 1910s when written vernacular Chinese was promoted, but it still maintains its distinctive features in contrast with Western languages.
Regardless of the
Westernization and borrowing of modern terms from other countries such as Japan, Chinese language stands in contrast with Western languages. Let's discuss some of the features:
1. Form-govern-spirit language vs. Spirit-govern-form Language
When we say that Chinese is characterized by meaning perception, we mean that the comprehension or production of Chinese does not depend on objective inflectional markers for structural definition; it lacks \English, there should be a verb in a sentence and there must be an agreement of subject with the predicate. The predicate is just like a pivot of a scale. The subject and predicate forms a framework of the sentence so that other elements may be added to it as subordinates.
English offer more possibilities to choose inanimate
subjects while in the same circumstances, Chinese tends to take animate agents as subjects ( as in the sentence \contrast, Chinese speakers would say, \life pleasant and enthusiastic\phrase in the sentence begins with the doer though it may not appear. In fact, Chinese subject is the topic followed by comments
，not corresponding to the predicate verb in the
way English subject does. Besides, there is no necessity of formal markers as the sentence boundary.
Sentence marking is determined by meaning fulfillment. Spirit
manipulates meaning and meaning determines the choice of form. Different readers may give different punctuations to the following utterance:下雨天留客天留人不留。(下雨，天留客，天留人不留！
/下雨天，留客，天留，人不留！
/下雨天，留客天，留人不？
留！/下雨天，留客天，留人？不留？）
Hence the recognition of punctuations and structures depends more on personal perception and judgment.
This spirit oriented method structural organization and
comprehension indicates that Chinese grammar needs active participation of the listener or speaker. If the listener, the speaker or the situation and context have changed, the meaning of the utterance will certainly change. There are a lot more omissions in Chinese narrative language and poetic works which depends on personal perception for comprehension. Chinese is a language that highlights human subjectivity. It is also
called man-governed language in contrast with the law-governed language/ rule-governed language /.
The flowing features of Chinese phrase-chunks cannot successfully fit into the frame of Western rigid grammatical theory because it uses spirit-centered method to organize its sentences.
The structure of each chunk is in fact very simple, but the
spirit in the language can manipulate the complex on the basis of the human initiative in sentence construction. Chinese people skillfully make use of the basic units to form varied patterns and styles.
The core and essence of the grammatical spirit is dialectically
There are fixed laws
combining simplicity and complexity, dynamism and regularity.
and flexible laws, invariable laws and variable laws. But the laws on the whole are under the control of the person. Just as Zhang Xuecheng says \pattern; grammatical rules are established when the writing is completed. Rules in the description of a person accommodate a person; rules in the narration of an event comply with the event. There is certainty among uncertainty. \
（屡战屡败/屡败屡战）This we call it
iconicity. That is, Chinese imitates events in reality according natural logic. The
arrangement of words goes along with the natural truth obtained though the perception of the speaker. It is clear that, in Chinese, the most essential and prominent factor is not the form, but the spirit.
If it is true that in Western grammars form governs spirit(
以神摄形).
以形摄
神) ,then in Chinese grammar spirit governs form(2. Focused View vs. Distributed View
As mentioned above, Western inflectional languages organize a sentence around a finite verb. This finite verb acts as a pivot or focal point.
Other sentence constituents
are arranged around the focus according to their relationships to the verb which is in agreement with the subject in person and number. If other verbs appear in the sentence, they must take non-finite forms so as to be distinguished from the predicate verb. organization reflects the Western mode of thinkingalso be seen in traditional such as Last Super by Leonardo Da Vinci .
In contrast, Chinese sentence organization and comprehension cannot be characterized by the \flowing phrase-chunks. It is very much like the visual perspective of Chinese painting such as the scroll painting Qingming Shanghe Tu (Riverside Scene at Pure Brightness Festival). The viewpoints of the painter keeps changing as he takes his steps forward. Unrestricted by the natural visual field, the painter can portray in one picture the scenes only in different visual fields. This mode of thinking characterized by changing viewpoints is fully
Such
—Focused View. This view can
by Raffaello Sanzio and
The School of Athens
expressed in Chinese sentence structure. Besides, the changing view points can be expressed with coordinative clauses or sentences, or even with different words presenting different images or scenes. This word sequence can be typically found in Chinese verses in which images are arranged in mosaic way, such as \
鸡声茅店月，人迹板桥霜
\枯藤
老树昏鸦，小桥流水人家，古道西风瘦马，断肠人在天涯。\another without any connective. Instead, in order to express ideas, it arranges phrase-chunks with changing viewpoints: the chunk arrangement flows, description proceeds from beginning to end; narration is intermingled with comment; the effect follows the cause; what happens first precedes what happens latter; the whole comes before the part; the condition is put before the result, so on and so forth. Chinese sentences do not have such control centers as sentences of Western languages. Instead, they flow in a dynamic manner. There is no disorder or disorganization even though there are no connectives or form markers. It is distributed in form but focused in spirit. 3. Subject-Predicate Language vs. Topic-Comment Language
Charles Hocket, an American structuralist linguist once pointed out that Chinese sentence pattern is just like Chinese boxes. This is a vivid description of the topic-comment sentence structure of the language.
Chinese boxes
are a set of boxes of graduated size,
each fitting inside the next larger box, similar to the Russian matryoshka doll.In literature a Chinese box structure refers to a frame narrative['n?
r?tiv], a novel or
drama that is told in the form of a narrative inside a narrative (and so on), giving views from different perspectives, such as Chinese story-telling scripts in Song and Yuan Dynasties, with the Dreams of Red Mansion as Typical. Chinese language also carries such characteristic. For instance, \
这件事我的脑子里一点印象也没有了
\（This matter in
）,is the typical
my head no impression/ No Impression is left on my mind about the matter
Chinese-box pattern in which a topic is embedded in another topic. You can put almost any phrase in the front followed by comments. The front part is the topic of the comments. Verb(s) is not necessary in the Chinese sentence. A Chinese sentence does not take one particular verb as its focal point. In contrast, English pattern is focused around a subject-verb frame with others as its subordinate elements and the subject should be in agreement with the verb in pronoun, number, time, tense. 4. Hypotactic vs. Paratactic
The Han people think highly of inspiration. They tend to appeal to intuitive understanding when they think about complicated things. The Chinese adopt a thought pattern of intuition and understanding while English people adopt a thought pattern of logic and reason. These tendencies have strong impact on each language. English needs more
Lecture5theChineseCulturalSpiritinChineselanguage,LiteratureandArt中国文学精神
