Talk:大纲

Parts of speech
These are not all nouns. Please fix. 71.66.97.228 07:00, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * This is just horrendous. If he does it again, I will block him indefinitely. Most of the definitions are archaic/obsolete, which he failed to tag. I will have to do some research into this term myself. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 23:34, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Now that is some outrageous unjustified defamation. Please at least do some research before making such comments and potentially abusing your admin rights.
 * It had been fortunate that I listed the definitions according to modern usage frequency, not chronologically and etymologically (as in "汉语辞海" and "汉语大辞典"). I wrote the heading as "Chinese" and therefore tagging the definitions as obsolete was unnecessary, since many of these meanings still survive regionally and in compounds or idiomatic sayings. And then someone came along and insisted on ludicrously changing all the "Chinese" headings to the misnomerous "Mandarin", and failed to tag correspondingly. The language that you are regarding as "Mandarin" here is more properly called "Modern Standard Chinese" (现代标准汉语 as in zh.wp) and is the literary standard of all Chinese varieties (the Wikipedia page is about to be moved to "Modern Standard Chinese"). Trying to get the supposedly "Mandarin" definition of a word and making it stand out against a bunch of other mostly unstandardised, typically unwritten "languages" is simply ridiculous. I speak three vastly different Mandarin dialects, and what this page has had been trying to combine them into one, underrepresenting the non-Modern Standard Chinese Mandarin dialects by forcibly giving them the label of "Mandarin" without some sort of indication of standardness.

This is the 汉语大辞典 entry of this word:


 * 1) 網的總繩. (the main rope of a fishing net)
 * 三國·魏·曹植《白鶴賦》：“冀大綱之解結，得奮翅而遠遊. ”
 * ''Three Kingdoms, Wei, Cao Zhi, "White crane": Longing for the unbinding of the fishing net's main rope, through which it endeavours to spread its wings and fly faraway.
 * 1) 總綱；要點. (general principle, main point)
 * 《漢書‧敘傳下》：“略存大綱，以統舊文. ”
 * 宋·蘇洵《上韓樞密書》：“太尉取其大綱而無責其纖悉. ”
 * 清·李漁《閑情偶寄‧詞曲‧詞采》：“文章頭緒之最繁者，莫填詞若矣. 予請總其大綱，則不出情景二字. ”
 * 1) 特指著作、講稿、計劃等經系統排列的內容要點. (content outline of a work, plan, speech)
 * 郭沫若《洪波曲》第七章一：“決定工作方針，頒發每周宣傳大綱，而一切工作大抵是由三廳總其成. ”
 * 1) 主要的法紀. (main laws and disciplines)
 * 三國·魏·曹植《節游賦》：“愈志蕩以淫遊，非經國之大綱. ”
 * 元·劉壎《隱居通議‧經史二》：“看來武侯相業，大綱常嚴，蓋其學出於申韓，故其政刻深. ”
 * 1) 猶大概. (roughly, generally)
 * 《二程語錄》卷十一：“又問：‘或言人如壽得一百二十數，是否？’曰：‘固是，此亦是大綱數，不必如此. ’”亦作(also)“大剛”.
 * 元·關漢卿《裴度還帶》第二摺：“大剛來則是我時兮命矣. ”
 * 1) 亦作“大剛”. 猶言總之. (in all, in short)
 * 元·張鳴善《水仙子‧譏時》曲：“鋪眉苫眼早三公，裸袖揎拳享萬鍾，胡言亂語成時用，大綱來都是烘. ”
 * 元·湯式《一枝花‧檜軒為越中沙子正賦》曲：“能借取四時春造化，似生成一片翠屏帷，大剛是即景成規. ”
 * 1) 猶言特意，硬要. (insists on doing something)
 * 元·無名氏《翫江亭》第四摺：“這廝便指望，大綱要成雙，百般的不肯將咱放. ”

Wjcd 00:26, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Dear User:Wjcd, I am very glad you are contributing to Wiktionary again, as you are clearly very knowledgeable about the (Standard) Mandarin language as well as the Chinese language(s) in general. First of all, not all the definitions are nouns, and after a month (or has it been longer, now?), this should be fixed, as they are currently all listed as nouns, although some of them are not nouns. Next, "Chinese" is not a header used in entries at Wikipedia, since it's not a discrete language but a conglomeration of related languages/dialects. There was a great deal of discussion several years ago that led to the consensus that Chinese languages/dialects should have their own headers ("Mandarin," "Cantonese," "Min Nan," "Wu," etc.) In this case, "Mandarin" does mean standard Mandarin (putonghua), "Cantonese" means standard (Guangzhou) Cantonese, "Min Nan" means standard Taiwanese (Hokkien), and "Wu" means standard Shanghainese. I had opined at the time that these should all be grouped as sublevels of "Chinese" but was outvoted. At Wiktionary generally if a language/dialect has its own ISO code it can have its own header. If there are sub-sub-varieties of a language (such as, for example, the sub-dialects of Sicilian or the sub-dialects of Emiliano-Romagnolo (such as Piacentino and Bolognese, which are quite dissimilar despite being grouped by linguists as sub-dialects of the same "language"), variant usages can be listed in sub-sections of the main header. Although we have had no one add any, I suppose regional Mandarin (northern Chinese) usages such as Sichuan Mandarin, Yunnan Mandarin, Shaanbei Mandarin, etc. could be added in such a way under the "Mandarin" header if they have the proper subheadings; similarly, Chaozhou usages could be added under the "Min Nan" heading; although the Chaozhou language often differs significantly from Min Nan it is usually grouped by linguists as a sub-dialect of Min Nan.

Getting back to the "Mandarin" heading, I do believe we can include antiquated definitions or usages (as, in fact, some characters and terms are hardly, if ever used in the modern day), if those are properly preceded by something like "(obsolete)." I hope this background information helps, and look forward to any new entries you choose to create in the future (keeping in mind that making sure parts of speech are accurately assigned in all our entries is important). 71.66.97.228 06:58, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Compare the Chinese situation with the Arabic one - Both are macrolanguages in ISO, both are written in a non-Latin script, and both have a modern literary standard (see w:Talk:Standard Mandarin). The function of Modern Standard Chinese (literally from 现代标准汉语) is strikingly similar (name included) to Modern Standard Arabic: both are compulsorily adopted when it turns to newspapers and other written documents. In comparison, MSC is much more widely promulgated than MSA. And yet, there is no such category as "Modern Standard Arabic nouns", an "Arabic" heading can be gladly accepted without objection, and there is no category for romanised Arabic words analogous to Category:Chinese romanizations. Clearly this is not a manifestation of the said "one ISO code (or language), one heading" policy. How this all works here is dictated by perceptions of these languages from a mostly non-native speaker Wiktionary community. Sadly the policies make it difficult (at least seemingly, in this editing community) to overturn the already-established consensus reached by a group of earlier self-identified knowers, and the power distribution also makes it difficult for dissenters to survive well, as illustrated in the foregoing comments. I am despondent already, especially after seeing that the Chinese language presence here is set to be riddled with Pinyin entries, added by a contributor who regards 鞋 as a non-word. Wjcd 11:55, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I have already said that regional Mandarin usages (from colloquial northern Mandarin, Shaanbei Mandarin, Yunnan Mandarin, Sichuan Mandarin, etc.) can be added under the "Mandarin" heading, with the proper subheadings and proper identification of which subdialects the usage appears. In the case of Cantonese, Wu, Min Nan (Hokkien), etc., these are really not the same language as Standard Mandarin, and when written, due to differences in vocabulary, grammar, etc. can sometimes make little sense to a reader familiar only with Standard Mandarin. I am sure you already knew that, but I'll reiterate that this fact is one of the main reasons for the agreed-upon avoidance of a single "Chinese" header for Sinitic entries spelled in Han characters, despite the wish among some to promote the idea of a common "Han Chinese language" identity. We need to work diligently and conscientiously, within the agreed-upon parameters of our project, which have been arrived at for logical reasons such as the above. I'll also reiterate that the incorrect parts of speech in several of the entries do still need to be fixed. 71.66.97.228 18:43, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * You didn't really respond to my doubt above, on the unreasonably dissimilar treatments of Chinese and Arabic entries. Wjcd 06:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Although I know something about the Arabic alphabet, I don't know enough about Arabic language to be able to respond. What was your point again? Stephen G. Brown is the one who knows Arabic well. 71.66.97.228 03:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the character 鞋, are you saying that it is used, either in speech or print, as a word on its own? If so, do you have evidence of this? The editor relying on the "Wenlin Dictionary" is saying that it must be "bound" to one or more other characters in order to be used in Standard Mandarin. Because s/he was so emphatic about this, I accepted it, but my only question is, was this always the case? I believe that some of the multi-character Mandarin words may not have originally been used in Old or Middle Chinese, but instead arisen over the centuries to avoid confusion between the many syllables with the same pronunciation and tone. That would mean that some words formerly used as single syllables are now nearly always or always pronounced in combination with other characters (such as the addition of "-zi" to indicate that it is a noun), simply to avoid confusion. 71.66.97.228 18:47, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Firstly, in Classical Chinese and its modern Chinese descendants, virtually every character is a (free) morpheme. Apart from -然, -子, -们, 阿-, 老-, -化, -家, -者, -头, -仔, 可-, -儿 which are both bound and free morphemes, there are hardly any characters that can be classified as bound morphemes/affixes. The fact that in modern descendants some characters do not appear to stand alone, is in most cases by no means indicative of their bound-morphemeness. Disyllabification of monosyllabic morphemes arose primarily from the need to disambiguate amongst monosyllabic homonyms, and to a lesser extent, from the need for further and more meticulous meaning clarification. But with non-monosyllabic morpheme-containing compounds, disambiguation is not a concern.
 * Secondly, Pinyin is not what written Chinese is supposed to be like. Acceptance of mere transcriptions or transliterations entries is unwarranted. Wjcd 06:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Firstly, let me apologize for my words. I might have been a little too harsh and please do not take this the hard way. I retract my statement about some of the defs being obsolete. I do not know all the regional dialects and am thus not qualified to make such a statement. Anyhow, there seem to be multiple issues being discussed on this talkpage. One of them being the addition of Pinyin. I do support your idea that Pinyin is simply a transcription scheme and should not stand on their own as dictionary entries. They are, however, a valid lookup mechanism and should be included solely for that purpose (as opposed to having their own definitions). Not long before this, we just passed a vote to ban the addition of all non-toned pinyin entries: here. If you take a look at my comments in there, I suggested taking this further by only allowing pinyin entries to reference their corresponding character entries instead of having their own definitions (lots of duplication efforts!). Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 04:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

We are not talking about non-toned pinyin entries, which User:Ddpy's blocked predecessors were doing. Please take a look at his/her contributions and you will see the non-standard creation of many new "derived terms" categories, new hyphenated pinyin entries that are being called prefixes, suffixes, and affixes when they are regular nouns or adjectives, and the addition of the notation "bound form" to characters that are likely not "bound form." We have been discussing all of these things in various places, on a vigorous basis, for the past couple of weeks (trying to keep up with the user's many non-standard additions), up to now without most knowledgeable Mandarin contributors taking much interest. 71.66.97.228 05:17, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you; this is very, very helpful. What you say makes the huge number of new toned pinyin entries, categories, etc., which are being created at a very rapid rate by the new editor, even more disturbing, as no one knowledgeable about Chinese is stepping in to check this editor. 71.66.97.228 03:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That user is definitely not new. If I were an administrator, I would have blocked him/her straight away, as (s)he is clearly a Doppelgänger of the previously-blocked 91.- やから, who had a limited and misguided knowledge of the Chinese language. Wjcd 01:27, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I had assumed s/he was a native Mandarin speaker. There were several 91s, as well as a previous registered user who was blocked, who made a lot of non-toned pinyin entries, as well as a lot of hyphenated pinyin entries and categories. 71.66.97.228 01:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Finally, s/he has created an entry that seems perfectly fine, without hyphenated pinyin: diànshìtái. 71.66.97.228 03:54, 6 January 2011 (UTC)