Bulletin Summer 1988

component of it share the same initial consonant, vowel, and other pronouncing characteristics, these can also be entirely different. The same phonetic component combining with different radicals often results in different initial consonants and rhymes. Therefore, to be able to pronounce a Chinese character, we often need to consider all the components of the character, including its phonetic component as well as its radical. Q: How do we come to comprehend the meaning of a word? A: This is a more complicated matter. Often when you ask someone if he knows the meaning of a certain word, he may on instinct say that he does, but then he fail to explain the meaning properly. Even if the meaning of a word can be clearly stated, the resulting definition can vary according to the interpreter. At present, psychologists and computer scientists are thinking of using the 'features' as the units of describing word meanings, but to define 'features' is in itself a problem. I have for some time now been thinking of using the known 'propositions' involving a word as the means of computing this word's meaning. This computational procedure is of course far more complicated than the procedure for pronunciation that I have just explained. Nevertheless, its principle is perhaps not too difficult to understand. Q: Could we again have an example? A: If we read a simple story to a small child to begin with ‘X flies ... ， X is eaten by the family . . . . ' ， a n d then we ask the child what this X might be. The child will be able to tell, without referring to anything like a dictionary, that X ‘is something that can fly, and something edible'. From this example, we will see that in order to understand the meaning of a certain word, the human mind will seek comprehension through ‘recallable propositions that contain the word in question'. We have in the last several years gathered together a large number of readings in Chinese and English i n order to collect typical and representative samples of passages, and to this date we have already got passages of about one million words in each of both languages. We are still analysing sentences in these passages into prepositional units. I am confident that, in due course, we will be able to understand clearly, for example, the meaning of 'game' which is said to be undefinable according to Wittgenstein's reasoning. Wittgenstein infers that a ‘game' cannot be a ‘competition’ since 'solitaire' is a game one can play on his very own, and by the same token game also cannot be defined as 'entertainment' because professional soccer players will certainly disagree that a soccer game played on a Sunday afternoon is an entertainment event. I hope our research will lead to our understanding of our ability to compute the meaning of any terms in new lights. Q: Finally, returning to students of psychology ， what generally does a psychology graduate do in society? A: I know some of them teach in high schools. Some of them also study for a master's degree in business administration. But to work in research or in a job directly related to psychology, I believe one should need at least a master's degree in psychology. Graduates with such a higher degree should find themselves very able in handling administration work in establishments such as a large factory. 9