Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Schriifrestschr!: &sap in Homr of John DeFrarzcis
3.2.3 Writing System -- A Focus:.The contention of phonetic and
semantic approaches has a complicated history. Why has this
problem not been solved for such a long time? Why are there so
few phonetic loanwords in Chinese and why is it not easy for them
to exist? There are various arguments.* However, the reason of
utmost importance lies in the difference between writing systems.
The phonetic loanwords can not give full play to their
superiority if the Chinese characters are used. There is no space
between words in a Chinese text. Phonetic loanwords are obscured
in their midst. It goes without saying that they are not well
received. Thus, it can be seen that it is not the Chinese
language but the Chinese characters which do not tolerate
phonetic loanwords.**
3.3 A Common Outlet Applicable to Both Chinese Information
Processing and Chinese Terminology
3.3.1 Extension of the Use of Chinese Pinyin: Chinese Pinyin (the
Chinese Phonetic Alphabet) based on Latin script has an alphabet
totally similar to the English one in form. Though not an
official written language at present, it can be used in those
fields where Chinese characters are not convenient to use or
cannot be used at all. Not a few scholars hope that it will
become one of the two-track written languages (in other words,
that there will develop "digraphia1I, i.e. the parallel use of
Chinese characters and Pinyin). If this reasonable aspiration can
be realized, all the difficulties which Chinese information
processing and Chinese terminology are confronted with can be
readily solved. However, Pinyin can be used only as a "crutchv'
(an aid in other words) at the present moment. Naturally this has
considerably affected its ability to play its role fully. It is
imperative to extend the use of this powerful tool with great
effort.
3.3.2 Input by Means of a Phonetic Scheme: The greatest merit of
a phonetic (encoding) scheme lies in the input of words instead
of separate Chinese characters, while configuration schemes fall
short of this function. Inputting according to words provides
very favorable conditions for further processing, because it is
capable of eliminating the additional . process of word-
segmentation which not only works to no avail, but is also apt to
create mistakes. Certainly, homographs constitute a problem in
phonetic input. However, there is nothing to be afraid of in this
regard. Inputting according to words by itself will reduce the
amount of homographs. Furthermore, a reasonable orthography is
......................
* Please refer to Liu Yongquan,Modernization of Linguistics and
the Computer, pp227-241, Wuhan University Publishing House, 1986.
Also refer to: Liu Yongquan, wTerminological Development and
Organization in Chinatt, International Journal of the Sociology of
Language ( 59 ) , Mouton, 1986.
** See above.