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What actions the stones are doing
  Difficulty: Advanced   Keywords: MiddleGame, Tesuji, Tactics, Strategy, Proverb, Index page

Charles Matthews The various attempts to discuss the haengma concept, on SL and rec.games.go, haven't entirely satisfied me. There may be no more to be dug out of the Korean etymology, though. One idea that occurred to me was to take quite literally the thought that we should look at the various 'activities' of stones and groups, as examples of the slightly paradoxical idea of movement on the go board.

This is easily done, in a sense, by assuming that participles in English, which end in -ing, are the kind of term that do indicate such activities. In a way I'm standing on its head John Fairbairn's consistent comment that static shape is not the pro point of view, which is dynamic. I thought if one simply listed representative participles[1] already used here in page names, what might emerge was some snapshot of what the SL deshis do take to be the basic 'activities'.

So, a list.

Having compiled this list, I felt some sort of satisfaction: while the gaps are fairly obvious (nothing for example about blocking off or escaping with a group? or building thickness?) these two dozen terms tell me quite a lot about what go is about.

It also reminds me of the days when I thought there were just nine sorts of suji. That was clearly too limited, and I'd have to recover the thought-process to get that list back.

Alex Weldon: This page is related to the Beginner Move Function Problems that I've started to create.


Kungfu : To add to the list: Jumping

Charles Question: is jumping a function, or a shape? Most of the words chosen on my list describe functions (see JF's contribution below). I suppose capping is a little marginal.


John Fairbairn I'll take a rain-check on attempting to say what this page is or should be about, but as (I think) endorsement for Charles's approach, here is a similar list from the highly esteemed Fujisawa Tesuji Dictionary (in the form of my notes rather than the actual text, but it's close enough):

Volume 1 has two parts: Attacking Tesujis and Defensive Tesujis.

Attacking Tesujis divide into Separating Tesujis, Pressurising Tesujis, Sealing-in Tesujis, Shape-destroying Tesujis, Probing Tesujis, Tesujis for Creating Heavy Groups, Tesujis for Creating Weaknesses, Tesujis that Work in Two Directions, Base-destroying Tesujis, Capturing Tesujis, Ko-threatening Tesujis.

Defensive Tesujis comprise Connecting Tesujis, Tesujis for Advancing to the Centre, Running-out Tesujis, Shape-making Tesujis, Sente-taking Tesujis, Sabaki-making Tesujis, Countercutting Tesujis, Tesujis for Giving Respite to Two Weak Groups, Base-strengthening Tesujis, Bridging-under Tesujis, Tesujis for Resisting with Ko.

Other tesujis have similar lists. Note that this cuts right across the grain of normal tesuji books which use categories like hane, cut, atekomi. If you study a game and come to a point where you think that, say, a way of strengthening a base is called for, the Fujisawa book gives a long list of splendid examples. It's a source book of ideas rather than a problem book. This strikes me as the most rational way to study and is maybe why the book is so highly regarded. Seems like Charles has struck the same sort of chord.


Discussion of page title

mAsterdam Excellent content. It is hard to come up with a title that helps people find it. The name now only reflects the history of the original idea. So what would be a nice flag for this ship? The page deals with tasks you give yourself or the stones - An item here is action, a role to perform, a kind of "to do"-thingy, function. Hmm. Tough one. What can the stones do? for you?

Dieter: As for this other SL junkie, I am as bewildered by Charles' page titles as always. I really appreciate your article-like contributions Charles, but I have a general difficulty with them and the page title is symbolic for my difficulties. I really don't know what to think of a "participle survey" nor do I think it will occur often as a link on another page. Maybe you have other intentions with these pages than the ones I can think of. I repeat: I appreciate the effort.

On a similar note, maybe a page like basic instinct should be called basic technique.

Charles I'm quite willing to change this or other titles. I can see that a rather strict Wiki convention is that all titles refer somehow to a basic 'unit' of a supposed pattern language. That way, you link to a page in order to talk about the unit in question by indirection - and that's all. At the other extreme page titles can be like newspaper headlines: their main function is to make you read a little of the content, and see if it is interesting for you today. Basic instinct is a good illustration: it refers to a film title, and it is interesting, while BasicTechnique is duller. Anyway, perhaps a title change to What the stones are doing? might help.

Stefan: I'm with Charles on this one. The sexier the title, the better I like it, and people here will find what they look for one way or another. Other than that it's best to keep the style/content ratio on the page itself within limits, but that one's already been clubbed to death elsewhere. Finally, "Ing" as a page title here is maybe too much of an inside joke?

Charles Trust me, I did think of that. French speakers could use Ant.

unkx80: That title would make me think of Ing Chang-Ki.

Alex Weldon: If we're trying to think of a simple title that will make it easier to find the page and/or link to it, how about something like Action Words?, or just Actions?.

[1]

Discussion of gerund forms

Alex Weldon: As an English teacher, I believe that the "-ing" form of verbs is known as a gerund, not a participle. The sense in which I've seen the word "participle" used is as "past participle" (the past participle of "know" is "knew"), and "present participle" (the present participle of "know" is "known").

I may be wrong, though, because the terminology of English grammar is pretty wacky.

Charles I did gerunds and gerundives at school in Latin, and even at one time could have performed a valid gerundive contraction. It's quite perilous to transfer that over to English; so I wonder what the received terms are these days. Gerunds would be nouns, gerundives adjectives (as in 'a stinging rebuke'). But surely participles are still thought of as forms of a verb: I recall doing them in French and Russian as well. Don't think I'm going to rename the page as GoGerundPanorama.

Morten Going off-topic and not really wanting to argue with native englishmen, at the time of my english grammar schooling, it went along the lines that the -ing ending is common to both gerunds and present participles, but that the difference is that gerunds act as nouns (I think 'verbal nouns' is the correct phrase), whereas participles act as adjectives (probably verbal adjectives...?). With reference to Go and the word attacking, 'I enjoy Attacking' would be a gerund, whereas 'These are attacking stones' would be a participle.

If this page is about the 'notions', maybe Gerunds are what we are really talking about.

Bill: How about Garden of Go Gerunds?? ;-)

Rich: as it stands, the presence of "actions" in the page title makes the list one of gerunds; for a fussy (professional) editor, it may be more concise to remove that word and leave it as a list of participles.



This is a copy of the living page "What actions the stones are doing" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.