--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

> Anton Sherwood wrote:
> >
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > What was the occasion? He can't have been either 100 or 150

today --

> > > 125 is credible, but do people do 125th-anniversary tributes?
> >
> > It's not unheard-of.
>
> Ah, but is it heard of?
>
> Doubtless computer engineers think two negatives always make a
>positive.

The Boodberg article was mentioned because Mark of Pinyin News wanted
to write about Boodberg and he decided to republish the memorial to
Peter Boodberg apropos of no date or anniversary at all. Merely out
interest in Boodberg's ideas.

I emailed Mark and he sent ma a pdf article by Boodberg for my
enjoyment, such wonderful language!

Here are some quotes. If you would like the article plese email me off
list.

"The investigation of the corner-stone problem of Chinese epigraphy,
the relation of graph to vocable, has indeed been rather retarded than
advanced by the new finds. Most students in the field have chosen to
concentrate their efforts on the exotically fascinating questions
of `graphic semantics' and the study of the living tissue of the Word
has almost completely been neglected in favour of that of the graphic
integuement encasing it.

It is in the hope of dispelling this fog of misunderstanding that the
writer presents in the following pages for the consideration of
Sinologists a few hypotheses on the evolution of `sound and symbol' in
archaic Chinese, hypotheses that have in view the preparation of the
ground for the discussion of this all-important problem.

Pictograms [graphic representations of natural objects] and symbolic
signs do not constitute in themselves Graphs, i.e. elements of a
written language. In order to become such, they must be conventionally
and habitually associated with certain semantic-phonetic values.

Apart from a few exceptional cases, then, `ideographic' characters as
a class, we make bold to assert, simply do not exist. Those characters
which appear to be such in the later forms of the script are
predominantly `learned' creations of Chinese schoolmen, graphical
modifications of either original pictograms and symbols or perverse
rationalizations of `organically' developed phonetic compounds."

Some Proleptical Remarks on the Evolution of Archaic Chinese. Peter A.
Boodberg. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies vol.2, No. 3/4 (Dec.
1937) 329-372

Suzanne