Sekinan Table: Time and Shape of Language from How is the time alive in language

Thursday, 25 May 2023

Time and Shape of Language from How is the time alive in language

Time and Shape of Language

from

TANAKA Akio

1.
When one first hear the existence of time in language, he may doubt its certainty. But I have intuitively believe it since I learned the ancient Chinese inscription on bone ad tortoise shell (in Chinese called Jiaguwen). In my early 20s, I met with the book of Chinese modern linguists, WANG Guowei, this belief changed the conviction. His lifework book Guantangjilin is hard to read till now. But some papers in it are always inspires me by his deep and vast insight to character, language and history of ancient China. He also wrote fine criticism on Chinese pre-modern poem Ci.The title is RenjianCihua. The book is one of my favourite books of Chinese literature. People sometimes say that he was the highest genius after Song Dynasty, 1,000 years.In 2003 I wrote a tiny paper hinted by WANG's paper. It was the first paper for me that I directly faced the time inherent in inscription using Jiaguwen's update linguistic results. The title is " On Time Property Inherent in Characters".

On Time Property Inherent in Characters / 28 March 2003

2.
In summer 2003, I stayed at Hakuba, Nagano for a while for writing over the paper that was intended to present a symposium at Nara in winter. The paper was taking up the structure of written language that was dealt with the relation between time and grammar. But I did not solve the question on with what shape language exists in the language world. What shape has language and at where space does language exist or float? The theme on space was hard to deal at that time. I only concentrated to the shape in space. At 28 August I was fatigued to think and went for a stroll outside the inn putting up. The place was at the mountain side of the Hakuba Range and there was only one convenience store, where I walked in the shop and saw one advertisement of electric pocket dictionary. I returned having this advert to the inn and read its sentences. At the very time I found the shape of language I sought was sphere that was inherited time in it, also having grammatical functions. The paper's title was named to " Quantum Theory for Language" by the shape of language. This was a really product of clear and fine atmosphere of Hakuba with a distant view of the North Alps of Japan.

Quantum Theory for Language / 15 January 2004

3.
From 2004 to 2008 I wrote some papers on inscription and language. But I was not satisfied inwardly for the style of intuitive approach to language. I wanted to write more simple and clear expression. For being realised of my wish, I definitely needed to use mathematical tools. I returned to my 20s days' reading of Bourbaki that was desperately difficult for may ability. I again gradually read mathematical books and journals for seeking useful source of my hope to converting to language study. A certain results that came to my papers with satisfaction was appeared in 2008 by the papers titled Complex Manifold Deformation Theory.