On May 11, 2004, at 4:48 AM, Marco Cimarosti wrote:

> Luciano Perondi wrote:
>> I think that in chinese could have the role of "atoms" also the basic
>> strokes (bi hua), that form the elements such as "女" and "馬".
>
> But the brush strokes do not bear any recognizable function. Such an
> analysis is only visual, not functional. See my reply to P.T. Daniels.
>

Actually, I would say that the individual characters are the atoms of
Chinese, the radical and phonetic elements the protons and neutrons,
and the brush-strokes are the quarks.

How's that for being unhelpful?

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John H. Jenkins
jenkins@...
jhjenkins@...
http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/