ChineseCharacters.ppt

1、The Shape of Chinese Characters中国字的形状,Overview,The origin of Chinese characters The evolution of Chinese characters Basic knowledge of Chinese characters Structure, Stroke, Stroke sequence Challenges for computing Other topics Summary,The Origin of Chinese Character,Chinese script originated from pi

2、cture-writing The development of Chinese characters can be dated back to about 4,500 years. The characters were engraved on shell and bone, also on bronzes and stone.,Main Principles for Character Construction,Pictographs (4%) Ideographs (1%) Logical Aggregates (13%) Phonetic Complexes (82%),Charact

3、er Construction: Pictographs,Represent real-life objects by drawings(4%) Animal, plants, parts of the body etc. Example (Scripts from oracle bone) Horse rotate Human Sun Mountain,Character Construction: Ideographs,Represent positional and numeral concepts by indication (1%) Example: One 一 up, above

4、上 Two 二 lower, below 下 Three 三 However Four is 四, instead of Left is 左，instead of Right is 右，instead of,Character Construction: Logical Aggregates,Form a new meaning by combining the meanings of two or more characters (13%) Example Wood 木 Small Forest 林 Big Forest 森 Person 人 Small Group 从 Large Grou

5、p 众 Person 人 Ground 土 Sit 坐 手 分 + 手 掰 Hand To separate Hand To separate sth with two hands,Character Construction: Phonetic Complexes,Form a character by combining the meaning of one character and the pronunciation of another character (82%) Example (water) + 其 淇 (the river) (jade) + 其 = 琪（a valuabl

6、e white stone or gem) 木(wood) + 其 = 棋（Chinese chess),The Evolution of Chinese Character,The simplification of characters has been a continue process Reduce the number of strokes Replace complex components with simplified form Why simplify? To make writing simpler and faster To aid learning effective

7、ly To make knowledge Accessible,The example of evolution,Used in Taiwan, HongKong,Used in Mainland China, Singapore,An Exercise: Find Correspondence,An Exercise: Find Correspondence (Answer),The Structure of Chinese Characters I,The characters are written within the framework of a square.,The Struct

8、ure of Chinese Characters II,The same components may appear in different positions to form different characters,Stokes of Chinese Characters,There are 9 basic stokes There is a particular sequence in which the strokes must be written. If it is followed, the writing can be smooth and Fast.,9 basic st

9、okes,The Stoke Sequence,Properties of Chinese,Large number of characters 9,353 in 1st century C.E. 47,043 in 1716 60,000 in 1990 Occurrence 1,000 characters90% 2,400 characters99% 3,800 characters99.9% 6,600 characters99.999% Complicated and ad-hoc composition rules,The Challenge for Computing,Repre

10、sentation Chinese has much more characters. Two 8-bit or more encoding method is used. Coded Character Sets: China: GB 2312-80, Taiwan: Big 5 Unicode: Unify all of the worlds character sets into a single large character set. Input/output Demo Natural Language processing Recognition: speech, optical

11、character Analysis Understanding Generation (Synthesis),Other Topics: The Pronunciation,What sounds? Vast number of regionalects / dialects Standard is Mandarin (based on Beijing),茶,cha Northern zo Suzhou dzo Wenzhou te Xiamen (Amoy) tssa Guangzhou (Canton),Tea,Other Topics: The word and sentence co

12、mposition,At current stage, the creation of new characters is almost stopped. Use words composed by characters to express new meaning. By Combining the meanings of two or more characters 车(cart) 火（fire) 火车（train) 汽（gas) 汽车（car) 货 （cargo） 货车（truck） 公（public) 公车 （bus) By pronunciation 因特(inter) + 网（net）= internet,Other topics: Calligraphy,Summary,C