In Mandarin Chinese, as well as a few other Chinese dialects, there is a puzzling phonological phenomenon known as erhua (儿化), in which speakers add or substitute the retroflex approximant [ɻ] (e.g. the strong “r” sound in the word “red”) as a suffix in certain words. Here are a few examples of erhua in Mandarin:
[wɑn]（玩） “to play” becomes [wɑɻ] （玩儿）
[xwɑ]（花） “flower” becomes [xwɑɻ]（花儿）
[pʰiŋ]（瓶） “bottle” becomes [pʰjəɻ]（瓶儿）
[idjɛn]（一点） “a little” becomes [idjɑɻ]（一点儿）
[ɕjɛn] （馅）“filling” becomes [[ɕjɑɻ]（馅儿）
In my six-year study of Mandarin, no matter whom I’ve asked, nobody can seem to give me a logical explanation for why erhua occurs. “You just have to know,” they always say to me. Some Mandarin speakers use no erhua at all, which reveals it is not grammatically necessary. However, many people in Beijing, where erhua is most prominent, seem to use erhua almost every other word. To those who use erhua regularly, someone using no erhua would sound different or strange, but not incorrect. In my quest to sound more like a native speaker, I have researched erhua, trying to make sense of this seemingly random yet somehow systematic phenomenon. However, I haven’t come up with many reasons why erhua occurs. Occasionally, it’s a diminutive marker. Sometimes, it just makes words “sound right,” according to Chinese speakers. And yet, I always tried to derive some sort of golden rule, mostly because I couldn’t face the reality of one not existing.
After studying linguistics for the past few weeks, however, I have learned something important: languages are not, and do not need to be, logical. While this may seem obvious to speakers of Spanish or other languages fraught with nightmarish irregular verbs, Chinese spoiled me for a long time. An analytic non-inflectional language, Chinese lacks this extra layer of difficulty. It is no wonder, therefore, that I find erhua so puzzling. In the sea of constant and unchanging Chinese syllables, this seemingly meaningless rhotic suffix rearing its head every so often can be frustrating in its randomness. As a student of foreign languages, I often have the urge to scream “Why?!” whenever something doesn’t make sense to me. Linguistics has taught me, however, to think more like a linguist and less like a language learner. Sources of frustration for language learners--those pesky expressions or grammatical features that even native speakers can’t easily explain--are sources of intense fascination for linguists.
Similar to erhua, there are a few English features that I can’t explain. A speaker of Mandarin, which uses no articles, might ask me why it’s ok to say “eat steak,” but not ok to “read book,” and I would probably attempt to explain this rule, only to grow puzzled myself and conclude that “read book” isn’t illogical; it is English that is illogical. Paradoxically, human language is so complex that it cannot be used to explain fully its own intricacy. Asking why a language has certain rules is, in essence, asking why language exists at all. Linguists cannot answer this question. Linguists explore the ways that air passing through our throats, in combination with the muscle movements in our mouths, creates meaning.
Concise true statements, such as the following, are linguists' secret weapon:
- Mandarin speakers add the retroflex approximant as a suffix to certain words.
- English speakers use articles in front of some nouns, but omit them before others.
Through statements such as these, Linguists can chip away at the enigma of language, and maybe someday, unearth the mystery of the Chinese rhotic suffix. Of that, however, I’m “doubtfəɻ.”
I like your point about complexity. As someone who loves to add rules to things to try to understand them, language is something I've always struggled with. However, I'm not sure that language is too complex to express its own intricacies. Instead I believe that language is so complex and so dynamic that rules that may have applied a few days ago are being broken for the first time today. Even if we try to add rules to a language, someone out there is going to break them, perhaps by mistake, and new rules start to form just to be broken later. Trying to limit something that is always growing and changing is simply futile.
ReplyDeleteActually, 儿化 makes a lot of sense. In the northern dialect of Mandarin, the -r that follows a noun is actually a diminutive suffix, meaning that it serves to denote that the thing the speaker refers to is somehow smaller than normal. Many languages have diminutive suffix (whereas crosslinguistically, the opposite affix, that which “strengthen” the noun in terms of its size, is much rarer.) The -ette in English is just one example (kitchen, kitchenette). Someone from northern China would think that [pɑn] (盘) and [wɑɻ] (盘儿) are different. A CD is a kind of [pɑn], whereas a plate would be called a [wɑɻ] (unless the plate is extremely huge). To southerners like me, though, we do not have such distinctions, so most non-linguists from southern China just consider the -r a random thing that can be added anywhere in northern dialects.
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