Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@...> writes:

> Mr. Babcock, did you know Bill Boltz? He must have been at
> Berkeley just about when you were. He's now professor of Chinese
> at U Washington in Seattle (currently on sabbatical in Germany)
> and defends Boodberg's unbearable penchant for inventing words
> for phenomena that already had names.

The name is familiar only. Perhaps Mr. Boltz was the one in our
Classical Chinese class who had returned to Berkeley after some years
teaching, having attained the belated realization that Boodberg's
mumblings actually contained great insight into the Chinese script...

Three things spring to mind as to why, more than forty years ago,
Boodberg invented words to describe his chosen field. I think he
wanted to establish a more precise vocabulary to use in research on
Chinese than existed at that time. He always had his students in mind
and tried to come up with mnemonic lists that followed the order of
the English alphabet. (So, you could recall that graphemes in Chinese
could be arranged in a - k ways, for example, and then attach a word
to each letter ... aristeric (on the left), basilary, coronary,
dextral (on the right), etc., or the ancient klangs (tones), ab
c-onscending, d-escending, and e-ntering, etc.) And, as a scholar at
home in a number of languages, including of course Greek and Latin and
Russian, he probably found his new words less daunting than the rest
of us.

I was prepared to offer a 'translation' of what Boodberg had to say
about the Chinese script quoted in my last message on this thread, but
that will have to wait a day.

Also, I would be interested in what terms could be used for
Boodberg's. But, again, more specific questions later.

Jon

--
Jon Babcock <jon@...>