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Wschodnioeuropejskie Czasopismo Naukowe (East European Scientific Journal) #2(18), 2017 stst™ 65
Fang Xiang
Faculty of Philology, postgraduate student Belarusian State University
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND MORPHEMIC-DERIVATIONAL FEATURES OF THE MEDICAL TERM «CANCER» IN CHINESE, ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN
Summary: The purpose of the studies is to conduct comparative analysis and to show morphemic-derivational features of the medical term cancer in Chinese, English and Russian. The results of studies showed common characteristics and specific features on word-formation of the medical term cancer, in languages of different morphological types.
Key words: medical term, word formation, comparative analysis, Chinese, English, Russian.
Cancer is one of the most discussed and devastating diseases affecting human beings. Although as a disease, 'cancer' has attracted much attention, scholars also have done a lot of in-depth research leading to many of the latest discoveries. But as a term, 'cancer' is still a fascinating subject to discuss through comparative studies in different types of languages which may help us to better understand word formation features and the process of nomination.
The relevance of such study is due to the lack of word formation principles in new medical terminology. Current studies are focused on comparative analysis of the medical term 'cancer' in Chinese, English and Russian.
The purpose of the studies is to conduct comparative analysis and to show morphemic-derivational features of the medical term cancer in the above mentioned languages.
This incurable disease has been known to mankind for a very long time. Despite the fact that cancer is tearing apart the modern society, this illness is not the scourge of our time, but the bane of human beings since the most ancient time. The oldest description of cancer known to the western world (although the word cancer was not used at that time) was discovered in Egypt and dates back to about 3000 BC. It's called the Edwin Smith Papyrus and is a copy of part of an ancient Egyptian textbook on trauma surgery. It describes 8 cases of tumors or ulcers of the breast that were removed by cauterization with a tool called the 'fire drill'. The writing about the disease says, "There is no treatment.". [1]
The origin of term 'cancer' is credited to the Greek physician Hippocrates, who is considered the "Father of Medicine". In some ancient documents, detailed description and consequences of this disease have been found, but the specific name till Hippocrates, was not nominated. It was Hippocrates who first used the terms Kaprnvog (carcinos) and KapKivojjua (carcinoma) to describe non-ulcer forming and ulcer-forming tumors. In Greek, these words refer to a crab, most likely applied to the disease because the fingerlike spreading projections from a cancer called to mind the shape of a crab. The Roman physician Cel-sus later translated the Greek term into Latin as 'cancer', which is also the Latin word for crab. Galen, another Greek physician who continued Hippocrates's oncological research and brought a new word, 'ovko^ (onkos)' (Greek for swelling) to medical terminology to describe tumors. Although the crab analogy of Hip-
pocrates and Celsus is still used to describe malignant tumors, Galen's term is now used as the name for the special branch of medicine - oncology, which consists of two parts, word-forming element onco- and word-forming element -logy meaning 'a speaking, discourse, treatise, doctrine, theory, science', which came from Greek -logia, the root of Greek word legein meaning 'to speak'.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word 'cancer' has two meanings: 1) a malignant tumor of any origin; 2) a malignant tumor arising from cells epithelial tissue [2]. In the first case, the term 'cancer' expresses a general collective term, which unites about 200 different diseases, and the second is specific, i.e. only those malignant tumors with epithelial origin. The first meaning of the term 'cancer' is implemented in phrases, which belong to oncological terminology, but is not included in the nosological classification of neoplastic diseases.
Metaphoric transfer is one of the basic methods in medical term nomination. There are many medical terms especially some names of diseases: e.g. stones, kidney stones, gallstones etc. Definition of the word 'cancer' came from very ancient time, when understanding of the nature of this pathological process was the most primitive and when the main attention was drawn to the outer form of the tumor. Definition of the disease 'cancer' was due to the very remote similarity of appearance of some advanced cases of breast cancer with crab. With enough imagination, in the central focus of the tumor sees an analogy with a crab, and dilated, twisted veins surrounding the painful focus, just like claws and tentacles of the creature.
The primary Indo-European name for 'crab' also considered was derived from Sanskrit word karkatah 'crab', which its root karkarah - means 'hard, solid'. The similar word in Greek is Kaprivoq 'crab' [3].
However the origin of Russian term рак showed us a not so clear picture of its origin, but within understanding of its counterparts in some other slavic languages, we could spot the path in its nominative process. Russian рак 'cancer' was from proto-Slavic raкь, or church slavic ракъ, it has morphological correspondence with in Ukrainian, Belarusian and Bulgarian, which also spelt as рак. We can find more morphological similarities if we observe it in Serbo-Croatian рак, Slovenian rak, and Czech, Slovak, Polish rak. Based on point view of polish linguist Alexsander Brückner and Bulgarian linguist Stefan Mladenov, we can't find convincing etymology just by
у
66 Wschodnioeuropejskie Czasopismo Naukowe (East European Scientific JournaI)# 2(18), 2017 ИЗЯ
analyzing and comparing it with slavic languages. They consider that if comparing Russian рак with lithuanian erke 'Sheep lice, mites'or Latvian erce 'tick of cattles or common louse, a kind of beetles', ercet 'experience aching', then there is no perfect semantic relationship with the Russian one. Furthermore, if we compare Russian рак with sanskrit karkatas 'cancer' and karkaras 'rough' or greek Kaprivoq 'cancer' or even with latin cancer , it turned out that there is no explanation on the missing initial к-. Russian linguist Grigory Ilinsky did analysis of Russian рак with lithuanian rakti, ranku 'stabbing, poking, digging' and Latvian rakt (also in Lithuanian rakineti and rankstus) 'hasty, hurried', and from his understanding, the word may have some connection with fishmen's language [4].
The English word cancer was derived from classical Latin and in old English it had two forms, cancer and canceradl. The word was also considered under influence of old French chancre, therefore, there were two forms in English canker and cancre, they were used in the whole Middle English period. The term cancer, which again appeared in English daily usage about 100 years ago, and there was also dubbed form canker. This phenomenon disappeared in the early 18th century, when its semantic changed. Although there were some lexical units that were used in Old and Middle English to designate the semantic tumor, terms for example, kernel and bite in the meaning of cancer and tumor are no longer used in modern English.
Unlike the English cancer, Russian term рак had nothing to do with Latin, so here we have not a translation of the term, but only comparing of different terms with one logical overall concept. The Russian term also may have a mapping from the animal world. The medical term cancer also shows itself an example of euphemisation. The name of the disease is a part of chain of euphemistic designations: cancer-tumor-oncology.
The term cancer which in meaning 'disease', there is no plural form in practical usage, being used in English and Russian only in singular form. In Russian the lexeme рак is an inanimate noun and its accusative case coincides with the nominative case (unlike its homonym - рак the name of the river life known as in English crayfish, which has its accusative case form equal to its genitive form).
Different from English and Russian, the nomination of cancer in Chinese has its own historical path. Since 19th century Japanese doctors translated modern cancer as ШШ, which verbatim can be understood as 'tumorous cancer'. At beginning of the 20th century Chinese used it as a loanword from Japanese. But actually the Japanese concept of disease Ш came strictly from archaic Chinese. The earliest record known in Chinese about diseased, was found described in Шт ^ЖШ)) a Song dynasty medical work written by Ж who was considered as a great doctor by that time. One of his colleagues who lived in
Southern Song had a specific description about the disease in his book
Ш)) : shape of rock, male patient often found in abdomen, female in the breasts [5, p. 13].
About the derivation of term Ш 'cancer', term Ш is considered as one of the variants of the character й, and the word й in archaic Chinese means rock. Ancient Chinese doctors used variants such as Ш (meaning cancer in modern Chinese, Ш < radical ^ 'often refers to disease' + й 'rock'), й, M, as, Ш (meaning rock, and now still in use in modern Chinese). It shows us the nominative motivation of this disease, and how brilliant ancient Chinese used nature analogy to describe the disease or to be exactly - malignant tumor, as a rock shape swelling tissue usually with rough and uneven surface, usually hard, which can be found in abdomen, in breasts, kidney, neck etc.
However, there are not only morphological but also some phonological changes in the Chinese term Ш 'cancer'. From the aspect of word-formation in Chinese, term Ш is supposed to pronounced as — W [yan], and actually it was pronounced as [yan] in Chinese before 1950 [6, p. 324]. In Mandarin especially which is official in mainland China, the term Ш 'cancer' is recommended to be pronounced as ^'[ai], to avoid pronunciation confusion with another medical term ^ [yan] 'inflammation' (or it can be considered equal to the famous Greek suffix -itis), and at the present time, pronunciation Ш [ai] is considered to be the standard.
The mention of the deadly disease gives the metaphor of crayfish in Russian, but its origin as some of Slavists suspect is not very clear, and so further studies are required. The word рак also can be used to describe a political event or some social phenomenon, as a means to render a verdict of guilty, and to determine punishment. The use of word рак in political controversy may also imply/encourage fatalism and justify "hard measures". The word рак applied to any phenomenon - it is a direct call to violence.
Different from Russian рак, English cancer showed its origin to be quite clear, as just another case of Latinism. However the Chinese term showed unique derivational characteristics. The historical usage of Japonism ШШ in Chinese didn't last over a couple of decades at the beginning of the 20th century. And however we pursue the origin of the Japanese term ШШ (й^Ьф) , we can still find there is strong influence from Chinese culture, not only their morpheme Ш being strictly borrowed from Chinese, but also their Ш from the traditional Chinese medical term Ш 'swelling'. And it's worth noting that by showing itself as a metaphor of rock, the Chinese term ШШ 'cancer' complies with the principles of semantic derivation.
The results of current studies showed common characteristics and specific features on wordformation of the medical term cancer, in languages of different morphological types: synthetic (Russian), analytical (English), isolating (Chinese).
LH
Wschodnioeuropejskie Czasopismo Naukowe (East European Scientific Journal) #2(18), 2017 sbasH 67
References
1. American cancer society. [Electronic resource]. - URL: http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/web content/002048-pdf.pdf. - Date of access: 11.01.201720.02.2017.
2. Merriam-Webster: Dictionary and Thesaurus. [Electronic resource]. - URL: http://www.merriam-webster.com. - Date of access: 17.01.201725.01.2017.
3. Online Etymology Dictionary. [Electronic resource]. - URL: http://www.etymonline.com/. - Date of access: 18.01.2017-20.01.2017.
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6. ^^ Lee Rong. Mandarin and dialects. Pekin: Chinese philology. 5th issue, 1990.P 321-324.
