{"title":"中文一直是一门分析语言吗?写作对语言进化的影响","authors":"Liulin Zhang","doi":"10.1515/lass-2023-0028","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Chinese is commonly believed to be an analytic language, but evidence from philological works and cross-linguistic comparisons clearly suggests that various morphological operations existed in Old Chinese. The loss of Chinese morphology can be explained by the ideographic nature of Chinese characters: the Chinese language has been evolving in a way that stabilizes the pronunciation of each character. The effects of writing systems on language evolution can be widely observed from world languages, while writing per se has been evolving along the path of phonetization driven mainly by borrowings instead of conscious linguistic analysis. In history, language never picked writing systems based on linguistic features; instead, writing systems affect the evolutionary paths of languages: single signs of a writing system stabilize the basic units of the language.","PeriodicalId":74056,"journal":{"name":"Language and semiotic studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Has Chinese always been an analytic language? Effects of writing on language evolution\",\"authors\":\"Liulin Zhang\",\"doi\":\"10.1515/lass-2023-0028\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Abstract Chinese is commonly believed to be an analytic language, but evidence from philological works and cross-linguistic comparisons clearly suggests that various morphological operations existed in Old Chinese. The loss of Chinese morphology can be explained by the ideographic nature of Chinese characters: the Chinese language has been evolving in a way that stabilizes the pronunciation of each character. The effects of writing systems on language evolution can be widely observed from world languages, while writing per se has been evolving along the path of phonetization driven mainly by borrowings instead of conscious linguistic analysis. In history, language never picked writing systems based on linguistic features; instead, writing systems affect the evolutionary paths of languages: single signs of a writing system stabilize the basic units of the language.\",\"PeriodicalId\":74056,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Language and semiotic studies\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.0000,\"publicationDate\":\"2023-11-07\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Language and semiotic studies\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0028\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"\",\"JCRName\":\"\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language and semiotic studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lass-2023-0028","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
Has Chinese always been an analytic language? Effects of writing on language evolution
Abstract Chinese is commonly believed to be an analytic language, but evidence from philological works and cross-linguistic comparisons clearly suggests that various morphological operations existed in Old Chinese. The loss of Chinese morphology can be explained by the ideographic nature of Chinese characters: the Chinese language has been evolving in a way that stabilizes the pronunciation of each character. The effects of writing systems on language evolution can be widely observed from world languages, while writing per se has been evolving along the path of phonetization driven mainly by borrowings instead of conscious linguistic analysis. In history, language never picked writing systems based on linguistic features; instead, writing systems affect the evolutionary paths of languages: single signs of a writing system stabilize the basic units of the language.