Talk:母

Glyph origin

@Panates Hello, about the glyph origin. I was quite satisfied by the explanation that the dots were indeed meant to represent nipples, considering they coincide exactly with the correct region of the depicted woman's body, so the explanation was quite reasonable and seems to remain consistent even with the clarification that the character was originally just a variant of 女.

If it is possible, I would like to restore the (speculative, as in the form "perhaps"/"maybe") consideration of nipples, as was present in the entry before, unless this is contraindicated by the sources. But if this is, could you please show how to access the sources? As they are, they are not very useful at all for the average reader, because, assuming they're in Chinese, I can't even read what the text says on the matter a priori, but moreover the references cite no page numbers, so I wouldn't even know where to look if I could. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 14:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Sure, here are the pages:

- 劉釗2011: 古文字構形學, p. 27

- 黄德寬2014: 古漢字發展論, pp. 107-108

(姚孝遂1989《再論古漢字的性質》 is entirely on this stuff so it's important to read it as a whole thing)

If you need the files themselves, contact me via e-mail (panatesu@gmail.com) or discord (panates).

Some important theory to know before discussing the topic:

- In the ancient script, there were the so-called "decorative/differentiative strokes/dots/elements/marks" (usually called 飾筆 or 分化符號) - sometimes they were used just to add more strokes to a glyphs, but sometimes for differentiating the usage of the glyphs;

- In the ancient script, some glyphs were polyvalent, i.e. were used to write different unrelated but semantically close words (e.g. 大 for both {大} and {夫}; 士 for both {士} and {王}; 瓜 for {瓜}, {卣} and {匏}; 女 for both {女} and {母}, etc.) - those were usually differentiated from each other later via addition of a decorative/differentiative stroke/dot (大→夫, 士→王, 瓜→卣, 女→母) but there were many glyphs where those dots/strokes were unrelated to the functions of the glyphs and were arbitrary (e.g. 日, 周, 示, 五, 其, etc., for more examples see 劉釗2011 pp. 23-28);

- 女 likely not even represents a woman, but rather a kneeling person with the original meaning {如} "to obey". This comes from the facts that (1) it depicts a "kneeling = obeying" worldview (cf. glyphs like 卩, 印 and other Shang glyphs which were used for the words with semantics like "slave" or "obey"; there are plenty but those are the ones i can provide off my head now), which was commonly represented and not just in the Chinese script; (2) 女, 人 and 卩 (also a kneeling man but for a different word) were used interchangeably in some glyphs (e.g. 孕, 安, 包/好 or 毓; for more see 劉釗2011 pp. 41-42); (3) phonetic loans were the most common way to write a word in the ancient script. The problem is that 女 is tightly connected with the semantics of "woman", but this may be due to the phenomena of the "loaned" meanings becoming the main ones, as it happened in many glyphs (e.g. 我, 死, etc., or, for a more recent example (Warring States ~ Qin ~ Han), the 玨 semantic in glyphs like 瑟, 琴, 琵, 琶, which originally was a shortened form of 麗 loaned to write the word {瑟}).

- We literally have a glyph where the nipple is depicted - in the text 合22246 where it's representing {乳} (the form is presented in the wiktionary article on 乳 too, though it's missing many transitional forms but that's for another topic). The nipple of this glyph is clearly different from the dots of 母, as it comes from the chest and written only once. This form comes from a non-royal group of texts called 婦女卜辭, and in this group dots of 母 are represented differently from the nipple of 乳. Those subtle differences are very important in analyzing the script, as it already lead to many discoveries about what glyph is used for what. Of course, this "single nipple" in 乳 may be due to shortening, but there's no evidence for it, at least for now.

Summing up, we have plenty of evidence about dots in 母 being just of differentiative nature, and we have no evidence of them representing nipples. Feel free to ask any questions if you have them or the sources for all the info i've just written. I'd like to correct all the glyph origins on wiktionary, especially the most commonly repeated erroneous/outdated ones like 安, 瓜/卣, 死, 寡, 育, 面 etc. (though i don't know how to add/delete the ancient forms, as the source wiktionary uses for its forms is very outdated and not that detailed), so I can foresee more talks like that. Panates (talk) 11:33, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi, thanks. Please keep improving things like this. This is great. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 21:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

In addition, it seems many Japanese sources on glyph origin are very flawed as well. They very often even disagree with the theories from Chinese ones and those presented here, and it often turns out they present speculative or folk etymologies as fact. Thank you for elucidating the importance of scholarly inquiry on glyph origins. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 21:57, 5 June 2024 (UTC)