From: Allen Haaheim (haaheima@interchange.ubc.ca)
Date: Sun May 18 2003 - 20:55:15 EDT
Andrew, Thank you for your thorough summary. I failed to make clear that I
was talking about the implicit grouping of characters *below* the explicit
subsort level in the _Ci hai_ index, and was wrong to say that this implicit
subsort was by radical. Rather, they are subsorted by stroke category (I
think?), but definitely not radical, although it looks like radical because
same-radical characters tend to be lumped together due to stroke category
sorting method. At any rate, there still appears to be some method of
implicit subsort below the explicit first-two-strokes (qimao) subsort in
square brackets, which seems to yield arbitrary groups of smaller size
because of the three levels involved.
So, the only dictionaries with primary stroke/radical indexes I have at home
are the Far East (Taiwan), and the _Koujien_ Japanese dictionary (yes,
neither are PRC publications).
>As to what indexing method is most prevalent, a survey of 25 Chinese
dictionaries and other reference books published in the PRC shows the
following . . .
>Stroke Count Index - 13 cases
>Pinyin Index - 10 cases
>Radical and Stroke Index - 9 cases
>Four Corners Index - 4 cases
My Sample of indexes in dictionaries of Classical Chinese:
(I counted primary indexes only except Far East and _Ci yuan_, which I
counted as having two primary indexes each; your larger sample is doubtless
more accurate overall; preference for pinyin and radical/stroke also affects
what I have bought to some extent)
Stroke count/radical - 1
Pinyin - 2
Radical/stroke count- 6
Four Corners - 1
Stroke count/stroke category - 1
In my previous emails as well as here, I was thinking of dictionaries that
deal at least in part with traditional (Classical) Chinese, published
anywhere, so I included dictionaries such as Karlgren and Mathews, but
excluded dictionaries strictly of modern Chinese. I think this generally
raises the prevalence of radical/stroke indexes and of course lowers the
number of pinyin-based indexes. Below are all the books I used.
Karlgren _Grammata Serica Recensa_
Index: radical/stroke
Internal Order: rhyme category (of Qieyun?)
Mathews
Index: radical/stroke
Internal Order: modified Wade-Giles; and (explicitly or implicitly) by tone
_Wang Li gu Hanyu zidian_ (2000)
Index: Pinyin (explicit)/radical (implicit)
Internal order: radical/stroke
_Gudai Hanyu cidian_ (Shangwu yinshuguan, 1998)
Index: radical/stroke (both explicit)
Internal order: Pinyin
_Gu Hanyu changyongzi zidian_ (1998)
Index: radical/stroke (both explicit)
Internal order: Pinyin
New Practical C-E Dictionary (Liang Shih-chiu, ed., Far East co., 1972)
Two Primary Indexes: 1. radical/stroke (both explicit) 2. stroke/radical
(both explicit)
(Back of book also has full Bopomofo index and Wade-Giles index)
Internal Order: radical/stroke
(n.b. Newer Far Easts use Pinyin, I believe)
_Hanyu da zidian_ (1996)
Index: radical/stroke (both explicit)/ plus implicit subsort?
Internal Order: radical/stroke
_Ci hai_ (1989)
Primary Index: Stroke Count (explicit)/Stroke Category by first two strokes
(explicit)/stroke category ? (implicit)
Internal order: radical/stroke
_Ci yuan_ (1997)
Two Primary indexes: 1. Pinyin 2. Four-corners.
Internal order: radical/stroke
I'm also curious about the _Peiwen yunfu_ and _Kangxi zidian_, which I don't
have at home but are oft-consulted works.
>For all but three of these works, characters with the same stroke count are
>subsorted by the stroke category of the first stroke as indicated in square
>brackets. This is true of even those dictionaries such as _Ci Yuan_ which
do
>not explicitly suborder characters with the same stroke count.
You must have a different edition than my _Ci Yuan_ (Shangwu yinshuguan,
[xiudingben] hedingben 1-4, 1997, 1 vol.). In mine the primary indexes are
Pinyin and Four-corners, although there is a short "Hard-to-Find Characters"
index by stroke count/stroke category. The internal ordering is by
radical/stroke and is all divided into 12 parts by Earthly Branch, and
printed as running heads (a handy feature).
According to your survey, I also stand corrected on radical/stroke as the
"most commonly found" index, though my personal sampling of about ten
dictionaries still is mostly radical/stroke. And it is good to emphasize, as
we've both done, that usually a stroke count index is primary only because
the dictionary in question is already internally ordered by radical/stroke.
Please point out any more errors I might have made.
Allen Haaheim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew C. West" <andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu>
To: <unicode@unicode.org>
Cc: <haaheima@interchange.ubc.ca>
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2003 1:58 AM
Subject: Re: how to sort by stroke (not radical/stroke)
On Thu, 15 May 2003 15:36:49 -0700, "Allen Haaheim" wrote:
>> In indexes ordered by stroke count, the sub-sort is more often by radical
>> than first stroke(s). The only dictionary I have at home that sub-sorts
by
>> first stroke(s) is _Cihai_.
>Well, I can't resist a challenge, and now that I'm home here's the results
of a
survey of some of the dictionaries on my shelves.
>Stroke Count Index with no explicit subordering (but implicitly subsorted
by
Radical) :
>_Jiaguwen Jianming Cidian_
_Shuowen Jiezi_ (subsorted by Shuowen radicals)
>Stroke Count Index with no explicit subordering (but implicitly subsorted
by
pinyin) :
>_Jianming Gudai Zhiguan Cidian_
>Stroke Count Index with no explicit subordering (but implicitly subsorted
by
stroke category) :
>_Ci Yuan_ [stroke category order = d, h, v, s]
_Xiehouyu Cidian_ [stroke category order = h, v, s, d, b]
>Stroke Count Index explicitly subordered by the stroke category of first
stroke
only :
>_Hanyu Chengyu Xiao Cidian_ [stroke category order = d, h, hb, v, vb, sb]
_Hongloumeng Cidian_ [stroke category order = d, h, v, s, b]
_Jin Ping Mei Jianshang Cidian_ [stroke category order = h, v, s, d, b]
_Song-Yuan Yuyan Cidian_ [stroke category order = h, v, s, d, b]
_Zhongguo Lishi Da Cidian_ [stroke category order = h, v, s, d, b]
_Zhongguo Xingshi Huibian_ [stroke category order = h, v, s, d, b]
>Stroke Count Index explicitly subordered by the stroke categories of first
two
strokes :
>_Ci Hai_ [stroke category order = h, v, s, d, b]
_Hanyu Da Cidian_ [stroke category order = h, v, s, d, b]
I thought the latter was primarily indexed by radical/stroke. I guess not.
At any rate, Morohashi, HYDCD, and ZWDCD, the biggest dictionaries, are all
internally ordered by radical/stroke.
><key>
Stroke Categories :
>h = һ [U+4E00] (heng TM) "horizontal"
v = ح [U+4E28] (shu w or zhi ֱ) "vertical"
s = د [U+4E3F] (pie Ʋ) "slanting"
d = ؼ [U+4E36] (dian c) "dot"
b = ^ [U+4E5B] (zhe ) "bending"
>(my apologies if my mail client mangles the Chinese)
</key>
It's ok, I know them.
>For all but three of these works, characters with the same stroke count are
subsorted by the stroke category of the first stroke as indicated in square
brackets. This is true of even those dictionaries such as _Ci Yuan_ which do
not
explicitly suborder characters with the same stroke count. The majority of
dictionaries, however, do explicitly suborder within stroke count, by
grouping
those characters with the same initial stroke under a common subheading
under
the stroke count heading. For dictionaries with many characters, such as
_Hanyu
Da Cidian_ then characters with the same number of strokes are explicitly
subordered by the stroke categories of the first two strokes.
>Only two of my dictionaries subsort by radical for characters with the same
stroke count, and one is a dictionary of Oracle Bone characters, and the
other
is an edition of the archaic Shuowen dictionary compiled by Xu Shen in about
100
A.D. (and that subsorts by the 540 Shuowen radicals rather than the now
standard
214 Kangxi radicals).
>As to what indexing method is most prevalent, a survey of 25 Chinese
dictionaries and other reference books published in the PRC shows the
following
types of indexing methods (note that many, if not most, dictionaries have
two or
more indexing methods) :
>Stroke Count Index - 13 cases
Pinyin Index - 10 cases
Radical and Stroke Index - 9 cases
Four Corners Index - 4 cases
>The Stroke Count indexing method does come out on top, but only because it
is
>used as an indexing method in both works that are ordered internally by
>Radical/Stroke and also by Pinyin, and so do not need to be indexed by
>Pinyin or
>Radical/Stroke. In particular, all of my general dictionaries of Chinese
>characters are either internally ordered by Radical/Stroke and primarily
>indexed
>by pinyin (3 works), or internally ordered by pinyin and primarily indexed
>by
>Radical/Stroke (4 works).
>Only two out of the 25 are ordered internally by
stroke count (_Song-Yuan Yuyan Cidian_ and _Zhongguo Lishi Da Cidian_), and
these both have to provide a Stroke Count index in order to help find the
entries thus ordered.
Regards,
Andrew
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