本位之争

本位之争

本位是基本单位的简称。基本单位也叫最小单位，有时候也简称为单位。本位之争是指中国语言学界关于什么是 “语言的基本单位” 的争论。中国语言学界一部分人认为 “语言的基本单位” 是 “词”，简称 “词本位” 理论。还有一部分人认为是 “字”，简称“字本位” 理论。本位之争，争了几十年，至今没有定论。

本位之争是中文特有的争论，拼音文字没有这个争论。例如英文的本位是 word单词，没有任何争议。因为英文是单词组成的，严格地说应该是：除了标点符号，英文的句子是单词组成的。
同样的道理，除了标点符号，中文的句子是汉字组成的。中文的本位应该是汉字。但是现在中国语言学界的主流是 “词本位”理论，原因是某些中文语言学术语，概念混乱。

人类语言分为四种。手语，口语和书面语，这三种语言的单位是不一样的。英文 “语言的单位” 是指 “书面语言的单位”，也就是英文的单位。世界上不存在抽象的 “语言的单位”。但是中国语言学界只研究抽象的，不存在的 “语言的单位”。如果你问他们 “语言的单位” 是什么语言的单位，他们一般是顾左右而言他。因为一回答，词本位理论就不能自圆其说了。

还有中国语言学界把 “字” 和 “词” 混为一谈。他们不承认 “词” 是 “字” 组成的。有的人甚至不承认中文里有字，他们认为字就是词，这不仅违背了中文里 “两个字才是一个词” 的常识，而且是典型的概念混乱。

为什么会出现这种情况？一个原因是，由于中文停止了造字，中文出现了词典。词典不收的词，特点是 “词” 代表的意思就是两个 “字” 代表的意思。而词典收录的词（词典词）特点是 “词” 代表的意思，和两个 “字” 代表的意思，风马牛不相及。例如：东西，马上。由于常用的 “词典词” 的数量远远超过了常用的 “字” 的数量，某些人就误以为 “词” 是中文的单位了。

用几个基本单位合起来代表（一个）意思的现象，英文里也大量存在。例如check 意思是检查。check in 是办理入住旅馆的手续，check out 是离开旅馆办理退房的手续。have to 意思是必须，和 have 和 to 的意思一点也不搭。但是这不能改变单词是英文的单位。可能中国语言学界的人不太研究英文的结构，如果他们了解这个情况，他们就能理解不论中文有多少 “词典词”，都不影响 “字” 是中文的基本单位。

从语言学角度看，英文 word 应该翻译为 “字”。最早 word 的翻译就是 “字”。后来有人翻译为 “单词”，然后又有人简化为 “词”，于是 “字” 就和 “词” 混为一谈了。word 翻译为 “单词”，问题还不大，因为中文里没有 “单词”。“单词” 简化为 “词” 则是指鹿为马了。另外，中文的 “词” 也不能翻译为 word，而应该翻译为 phrase。

“词本位” 理论把大脑里的一个概念当作文字的一个单位。实际上大脑里的一个概念不等于文字里的一个单位，因为我们不仅用文字里的一个单位代表大脑里的一个概念，我们还用文字里的两个，或者多个单位代表大脑里的一个概念。
概念在我们的大脑里，我们无法讨论概念的单位，只能讨论文字的单位，因此文字的单位不能以大脑里的概念为单位，只能以文字的外形，也就是文字的形式为单位。

文字的单位是有形式的，一眼就能看出来。即使你不懂英文，英文的单词也很容易分辨，两个空格之间就是一个单词。中文的字，即使看不懂中文的老外，也能数清楚一句话里有多少个字。

中文的词，哪怕你学富五车，你也数不清楚。例如 “化学肥料” 是一个词，还是两个词，没有人知道。在现代汉语词典里，你可以查到 “化学”，“肥料” 和“ 化学肥料”这三个词。因为中文的 “词” 根本就不是一个单位。

中国语言学界只有放弃词本位观点，才能有正确的语言学理论。


回到新概念语言学

A mistake in Saussure's theory

A mistake in Saussure's theory

The prominent Swiss linguist, Ferdinand Saussure once wrote, “A language and its written form constitute two separate systems of signs. The sole reason for the existence of the latter is to represent the former.”

I think the reverse is also true. Saussure did not tell us homophones in the latter represent what in the former. Neither did he tell us uppercase and lowercase letters in the latter represent what in the former.

In fact, languages are a forms of thinking. Speaking is a voice form of thinking. Writing is a written form of thinking. Sign language is a physical form of thinking. They all represent thinking.

Because we, as hearing people, use both speaking and writing, we thought writing correlated to speaking. Perhaps deaf people may think writing correlates to sign language. Therefore, I believe that Saussure's theory may be in incorrect.

New Concept Linguistics

索绪尔理论中的错误

著名的瑞士语言学家费迪南德·索绪尔曾写道：“一种语言及其书面形式构成了两个独立的符号体系。 后者存在的唯一原因是代表前者。”

我认为反过来也说得通。 索绪尔既没有告诉我们，后者中的同音词代表了前者的什么。 他也没有告诉我们，后者中的大写和小写的字母代表了前者的什么。

事实上，语言是思维的形式。说话是思维的声音形式。 文章是思维的书写形式。 手语是思维的身体动作形式。 这些形式都代表思维。

作为有听力的识字人，我们使用口语和文字，所以我们认为文字和口语有关系。 而聋哑人可能认为文字和手语有关系。 因此，我认为索绪尔这个理论是错误的。

新概念语言学 

How old was he?

How old was he?

Zhou Youguang, a Chinese linguist, passed away last month. English media reported he was 111, while Chinese media reported he was 112. Which one is wrong?

Zhou was born on January 13, 1906, and died on January 14, 2017. In accordance with western practice, age is the length of time that a person has lived. Zhou was 111 years and one day old, shortened to 111 years old.

According to Chinese custom, age is the number of years that a person has lived. No matter if he were born on the first day or on the last day of a year, that year was his first year. For example, if a man was born on the last day of a year then that is his first year. And, the following day, New Year’s Day, is his second year. On New Year’s Day, he is 2 years old, although he was only 2 days old. Of course, this is an extreme case.

English focuses on how old he was. Chinese focuses on how many years have passed since he was born. In this respect, the number of English media is a cardinal number, and the number of Chinese media is an ordinal number.

In the past, the Chinese people have used the Chinese calendar. On Chinese New Year’s day, all Chinese people are one year older. According to the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Rooster began on January 28, 2017. If Zhou had died 2 weeks later, he would have been 113.

他多少岁？

中国语言学家周友光上个月逝世。英文媒体报道他111岁，而中文媒体报道他112岁。谁的数字错了？

周有光生于1906年1月13日，2017年1月14日去世。按照西方的习惯，年龄是一个人活了多长时间。周有光活了111岁零1天，简称111岁。

根据中国的传统，年龄是一个人活了多少岁。无论他出生在一年的第一天还是最后一天，那一年他都是一岁。例如，一个人出生在一年的最后一天，这一天是他的第一年，他一岁。第二天是新年春节，这是他的第二年，他两岁。虽然他才两天，他已经两岁了。当然，这是最极端的情况。

英文专注于他活了多久。中文着眼于他出生后过了多少个年头。从这一点来看，英文媒体的数字是一个基数，中文媒体的数字是一个序数。

过去中国人使用中国农历。在农历新年这一天，所有中国人都长一岁。按照中国农历，鸡年的新年是2017年1月28日。如果周老两个星期后去世，他就113岁了。

Father of Pinyin

Father of Pinyin

Chinese linguist Mr. Zhou Youguang, known as the father of Pinyin, passed away on January 14, 2017 at the age of 111. Zhou's contribution was to design a Chinese writing system scheme using Roman alphabet sixty years ago, which is referred to as Pinyin. Domestic and foreign news media reported the news. Linguisticly, some information from the reports is inaccurate.

“Before Pinyin was developed, 85% of Chinese people could not read, now almost all can”, BBC reported. However, Taiwan, another Chinese community, has not adopted Pinyin. People there almost could read too. Therefore, BBC attribute the low illiteracy in China to pinyin is unreasonable. Using Roman alphabet does not mean low illiterate. For instance, Romans Empire used Latin, but the vast majority of Europeans are illiterate. The vernacular movement in Renaissance improves the literacy rate. The reason is that it is easier to remember if letters or characters correlate with speech sounds. Therefore, the core cause of low illiteracy in China is the Chinese vernacular movement that took place nearly a century ago.

The New York Times reported, “adopted by China in 1958, Pinyin was designed not to replace the tens of thousands of traditional characters with which Chinese is written, but as an orthographic pry bar to afford passage into the labyrinthine world of those characters.” In fact, Pinyin was designed not to afford passage into the labyrinthine world of Chinese characters, but orthography of new Chinese writing system. In other words, the purpose of the design of Pinyin is to replace Chinese characters. Owing to conservatives strongly opposing, the temporary compromise was to acknowledge that Pinyin is not letters for writing, but Chinese phonetic alphabets. The effect is not good when using Pinyin as phonetic alphabets. It is the tool for the wrong job. Pinyin is Roman alphabets, not phonetic alphabets. Denying it is self-deception.

Kana, Japanese alphabet, were in use more than a thousand years ago, and Hangul, the Korean alphabet, were in use more than 600 years ago. Before they were officially in use, they all went through hundreds years of transition. Pinyin was in use in China almost sixty years ago and most Chinese people know Pinyin at present. The time is ripe for pinyin to be officially in use. All is ready except for the last push - We acknowledge that Pinyin is letters for writing. We can hardly do without Pinyin now.

Now the Roman alphabet is the mainstream of the writing system in the world, de facto standard. Roman letters are more efficient than Chinese characters, and the effect of twenty-six letters surpasses that of tens of thousands of Chinese characters. By adopting Pinyin, the Chinese writing system no longer need Romanization, the conversion of writing from a different writing system to the Roman script by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. China will have a modern writing system, and will also be a country with modern science.

现代仓颉

被称为拼音之父的语言学家周有光先生一月十四日逝世，享年112岁。周老的贡献是主持制定了“汉语拼音文字方案”，简称拼音。国内外新闻媒体都做了报道。从语言学角度看，有些报道是不准确的。

BBC报道，使用拼音之前，85％的中国人是文盲，现在几乎人人识字。但是，中国的另外一部分，台湾没有采用拼音，也几乎人人都识字。因此，BBC把中国文盲率降低的原因归功于使用了拼音，证据不足。并不是使用了拼音文字，文盲率就降低。例如罗马帝国时期，欧洲使用的拉丁文就是拼音文字，但是绝大多数欧洲人是文盲。文艺复兴时期的白话文运动提高了欧洲人的识字率。原因是如果书写系统里的字母或者符号和说话的声音有了关联，有助于记忆。所以中国文盲率降低的重要原因是一百年前的白话文运动。

纽约时报报道，1958年启用的汉语拼音，设计的目的不是为了取代成千上万的传统汉字，而是要让拼音成为帮助学习繁琐的汉字的一种工具。实际上，制定拼音不是要让拼音成为帮助学习繁琐的汉字的一种工具，而是制定中文书写系统的新标准。换句话说，制定拼音的目的就是为了取代汉字。只是因为思想保守的人强烈反对，最后妥协不承认汉语拼音是拼音文字，而是汉字的音标。拿拼音当音标使用，效果并不好。拼音不是音标，而是拼音文字。不承认是自欺欺人。

日本一千多年前就开始使用假名，朝鲜韩国六百多年前已经开始使用谚文。它们都经过上百年的过渡，才正式使用。中国使用拼音已经将近六十年，目前大多数中国人都懂拼音。正式使用拼音的条件已经成熟，差的就是临门一脚了-承认拼音是拼音文字。现在我们已经离不开拼音了。

现在拉丁字母是世界的主流，事实上的标准。拉丁字母比汉字效率高。二十六个字母的作用超过了成千上万的汉字。使用拼音后，中文不再需要罗马化。罗马化是国际标准化组织把不同的书写系统转换成拉丁字母。中国将有一个现代化的书写系统，中国也将成为一个有现代科学的国家。

Chinese and Mandarin

Chinese and Mandarin

The word “Chinese” means belonging to or relating to China, its people, or its language. The word "Mandarin" originally denoted the officials of the Qing Empire, or their language. The Qing Empire, or the Manchu dynasty, was the last imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912. Manchu is an ethnic minority in China.

Mandarin is a spoken language developed from a mixture of Han and Manchu languages hundreds years ago. The Han is the largest ethnic group in China that constitutes more than ninety percent of the population of China. In linguistics, Mandarin is a Creole language that is a hybrid language formed from the contact of two spoken languages. In china, Mandarin is named as Putonghua that is the language most Chinese speak.

Mandarin was written in both Manchu scripts and Chinese characters one hundred years ago, and now it is in Chinese characters only. Manchu scripts have been abandoned.

Mandarin was digraphia that use of two scripts for the same spoken language. There are many examples of digraphia in the world. Turkish, for example, that replaced a Perso-Arabic writing system with a Latin-based system in 1928. Another example is Hindustani, or Hindi-Urdu, which uses two different writing systems, Devanagari and Perso-Arabic. And there are other examples, such as Serbian, Punjabi, Konkani, etc.

Strictly speaking, all non-Latin writing systems are digraphia. The reason is that romanization by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, is the conversion of writing from different writing systems to the Latin scripts. Pinyin, Chinese alphabet, is the official romanization system for written Chinese.

In conclusion, do not confuse Chinese and Mandarin. If you refer Chinese as the spoken language, there are many spoken languages Chinese people speak, such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hakka, and etc. If you refer Chinese as the written language, it means Baihuawen, an official written language of Chinese.

中文和普通话

英文单词Chinese的意思是关于中国的，如中国人，中国的语言和文字。英文单词Mandarin原来的意思是指大清帝国的官员，或者他们使用的语言和文字。大清帝国这个满族人的王朝是中国最后一个王朝， 从1644年到1912年统治中国。满族是中国的少数民族。

Mandarin是几百年前由汉语和满语混合而发展形成的一种口语。汉族是中国最大的民族，人口占中国人口的百分之九十以上。在语言学中，Mandarin是两种口语混合而成的口语，也叫克里奥尔语。在中国Mandarin叫普通话，是大多数中国人说的口语。

一百年多前Mandarin用满文和汉字两种文字书写。现在满文已经被放弃，只使用汉字。

Mandarin曾经是一语双文，也就是一种口语使用两种不同的文字。世界上一语双文的例子不少。例如土耳其语，1928年用拉丁字母代替了阿拉伯字母。另外一个例子是Hindustani一种通用于印度和巴基斯坦的语言，它同时使用两种不同的书写系统，梵文字母和阿拉伯字母。还有其他例子，如塞尔维亚语，旁遮普语，康卡尼语等。

严格地说，所有的非拉丁字母的书写系统都可以一语双文。原因是ISO（国际标准化组织）的罗马化，把不同字母的书写系统都能换成拉丁字母的书写系统。拼音，中文使用的字母，是中文罗马化的国际标准。

总之，不要把普通话和白话文混为一谈。如果你把Chinese理解为口语，那么中国有许多种口语，如普通话，广东话，上海话，客家话等。如果你把Chinese定义为文字，那就是白话文，中国的通用文字。

An answer to Dr. Qian’s question 钱学森之问的答案

An answer to Dr. Qian’s question

Dr. Qian Xuesen, a renowned Chinese scientist, more than once asked a former Chinese premier a question. “Why do our schools always fail in training outstanding talent”, he asked. Talent here refers to scientific and technological talent only. There may be many answers to the question Dr. Qian posed. However, many people often ignore an answer – the limitation of the written language, or Chinese characters, on human thinking.

Why is the answer ignored? The reason is that until now the linguists in the world have not yet known what a Chinese word is, or what a Chinese unit is. The linguistic professors in China have been debating whether a Chinese word is a Chinese character or a group of Chinese characters for decades without a result. As a result, they cannot correctly compare Chinese and alphabet languages, such as English, and they do not know the gap between them. Some people in China even think that Chinese characters are better than alphabets, and so they resist Chinese alphabets.

Creating a scientific theory requires human brain thinking, and language is a thinking tool. If the other conditions are the same, language is the determining factor. Hence, the advanced language promotes human thinking while the backward language limits human thinking.  

Numerous overseas Chinese have achieved great successes in scientific field. Among them, quite a few have won the Nobel Prize. However, until now, people cannot create scientific theories in written Chinese. The reason is that the written Chinese limits human thinking.

The linguists sometimes confuse the spoken language with the written because they often shorten both two phrasal terms of “the spoken language” and “the written language” to a word of “language”. Compared to the spoken, the written is a superior tool for human thinking. Therefore, the sophistication or primitiveness of a written language may be decisive in human thinking.

How does the written Chinese limit thinking? Let me try to explain by contrasting Chinese with English. In general, the more units, the more advanced the language. Units, or basic units, are words. That is to say, the more words, the more advanced the language.

Chinese characters are Chinese words. Chinese has only ten thousand words while English has more than one million words that are still growing. This is the gap between Chinese and English. The reason is that the quantity of Chinese words is finite and fixed.

The small quantity of the Chinese words limits Chinese people thinking severely. Therefore, the number of Chinese words is too small and finite is an answer to Dr. Qian’s question.

reference: New Concept Linguistics

钱学森之问的答案

中国著名的科学家钱学森不止一次地问中国前总理一个问题。 “为什么我们的学校总是培养不出优秀人才？”他问。这里的人才是指科技人才。钱学森提出的问题可能有许多答案。然而，许多人总是忽略一个答案，那就是书面语言的限制，或者说中文汉字对人类思维的限制。

为什么会忽略这个答案（原因）？因为直到现在，世界上的语言学家还不知道什么是中文的word。或者说，什么是中文的单位？中国的语言学教授一直在争论中文的单位是一个字，还是一个词，至今也没有结果。所以他们不能正确地比较中文和拼音文字，如英文。他们也不知道中文和英文的差距。中国还有些人甚至认为汉字比拼音文字好，所以他们抵制汉语拼音文字。

创造科学理论要靠人类的大脑思维，language是思维的工具。如果其他条件大体相当，那么language就是决定的因素。因此，先进的language促进人类的思维，落后language限制人类的思维。

许多海外华人在科技领域取得了巨大成功。其中不少人还获得了诺贝尔奖。然而至今还没有人使用中文创造出科学理论。原因就是中文限制了人的思维。

语言学家常常混淆语言和文字这两个概念。原因就是他们常常把 spoken language 和 written language 这两个词简化成一个字language。和口语相比，书面语言是更先进的思维工具。因此，书面语言的先进与落后在人类思维中的作用是决定性的。

中文是如何限制思维的？我们可以从中文和英文的比较中找到答案。一般来说，单位越多，书面语言越先进。单位，也叫基本单位，就是word。也就是说，基本单位越多，书面语越先进。

中文的基本单位就是汉字。中文只使用一万个基本单位，而英文已经超过了一百万个，而且数量还在不断增加。这就是中文和英文之间的差距。原因就是中文基本单位的数量太少，而且是不能发展。

中文基本单位的数量太少，严重限制了中国人的思维。因此，中文基本单位的数量不能增加，而且数量太少，就是钱学森之问的一个答案。

参考：新概念语言学

Classification of Chinese Languages

Classification of Chinese Languages

Is Chinese a language or a group of languages? Before we answer the question, let's define the word “language” at first. There are four languages commonly used by humans: signed, spoken, written, and Braille.

We take English as an example. If you define “English” as the written English, then there is only one English. If you define “English” as the spoken English, there may be many English languages. For example, British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English, South Africa English, India English, Hawaii English, Texas English, etc., and as many as you can name.

Similarly, if you define Chinese as a written language, there is only one form -- Baihuawen. If you define Chinese as spoken, the answer varies. For example, there are two -- southern and northern, or six, seven, eight dialects, or as many as you want. The truth is that we cannot classify spoken languages by each spoken language itself, because everybody speaks differently, strictly speaking. Usually we classify spoken languages by the group of people, like countries, areas, tribes etc., as we need. Therefore, the classification of spoken languages belongs to sociology, instead of linguistics.

Welcome to New Concept Linguistics.

Chinese Languages 的分类

Chinese 是一种language还是一组language？在我们回答问题之前，让我们先定义language。人类通常使用四种language：手语，口语，书面语，和盲文。

我们以English为例。如果你定义English 为英文，那么只有一种英文。如果你定义English 为英语，可能有许多英语。例如，英国英语，美国英语，加拿大英语，澳大利亚英语，南非英语，印度英语，夏威夷英语，德克萨斯英语等，以及更多的你能说出来的各种英语。

同样的道理，如果你定义Chinese为中文，那么现在中文只有一种，就是白话文。如果你定义Chinese为汉语，那么答案有多种。例如两种话 -- 南方话和北方话。或者六种，七种，八种方言。或者你想说有多少种就多少种。因为严格地说，我们每个人说的话都不同，现实的情况是，我们并不根据口语本身对口语进行分类。通常，我们是按照我们的需要，根据人群，如国家，地区，部落等，对口语进行分类。因此，口语的分类属于社会学，而不是语言学。


请参考新概念语言学。