> This is not true of the graphical components that make up Chinese characters; the bottom level at which any meaning can be assigned is the entire character.
I don't speak Chinese myself, so I'm a bit unsuited for the discussion, but a Chinese friend told me that the characters are composed of base symbols. You can't necessary guess the meaning from that alone and sometimes they changed shape a lot over time, but that is true for other languages as well.
Maybe "-ing" is a less ideal example, because it suitability to be combined depends on word class (verb), and it actually changes the grammar, not the word itself. Maybe a better example is the "com-" in both "combine" and "compose". It does has some meaning on it's one, but what the actual combined word means is not necessarily directly inferable and has changed over time.
> This is not true of the graphical components that make up Chinese characters; the bottom level at which any meaning can be assigned is the entire character.
I don't speak Chinese myself, so I'm a bit unsuited for the discussion, but a Chinese friend told me that the characters are composed of base symbols. You can't necessary guess the meaning from that alone and sometimes they changed shape a lot over time, but that is true for other languages as well.
Maybe "-ing" is a less ideal example, because it suitability to be combined depends on word class (verb), and it actually changes the grammar, not the word itself. Maybe a better example is the "com-" in both "combine" and "compose". It does has some meaning on it's one, but what the actual combined word means is not necessarily directly inferable and has changed over time.