Modern Chinese History and Sociolinguistics

Contents

List of tables ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xiii

List of abbreviations xiv

1 Introduction 1

Part I Modern Spoken Chinese 5

2 Establishment and promotion of Modern Spoken Chinese 7

2.1 Development of Standard Spoken Chinese before the

late nineteenth century 7

2.2 Establishment and promotion of Modern Standard Chinese from the

late nineteenth century until 1949 13

2.3 Promotion of pKtDnghuà after 1949 23

2.4 Promotion of Modern Standard Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and

Singapore 30

3 Norms and variations of Modern Standard Chinese 34

3.1 Phonology of Modern Standard Chinese 34

3.2 Difference between Modern Standard Chinese and the Beijing dialect 37

3.3 Adulterated pKtDnghuà 41

3.4 Norms of Modern Standard Chinese outside mainland China 46

4 The standard and dialects 50

4.1 Dialects in contact 50

4.2 Socio-functional differentiation of Modern Standard Chinese and

dialects 53

4.3 Language policy towards dialects 57

4.4 Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore 60

Part II Modern Written Chinese 65

5Development and promotion of Modern Written Chinese 67

5.1 Old Written Chinese 67

5.2 Emergence of early Modern Written Chinese 68

5.3 Replacement of wényánby báihuà as Standard Written Chinese 70

5.4 Sources of and avenues of influence upon Modern Written Chinese 82

5.5 Uses of wényánand báihuà since the 1940s 87

5.6 Establishment of Modern Written Chinese and status planning 88

6 Norms and variations of Modern Written Chinese 91

6.1 Newly developed grammatical norms in Modern Written Chinese 91

6.2 Regional variations in the grammatical norms of Modern Written

Chinese 97

6.3 Newly developed lexical vii norms in Modern Written Chinese 99

6.4 Regional variations in the lexical norms of Modern Written Chinese 106

6.5 Efforts of corpus planning in the development of Modern Written

Chinese 109

7 Dialect writing 114

7.1 Single standard written language for dialects 114

7.2 Causes of the under-development of dialect writing 115

7.3 Current endeavours in Taiwan toward dialect writing 121

7.4 Implications of standardization of dialect writing 126

Part III The modern Chinese writing system 129

8 Basic features of the Chinese writing system 131

8.1 Typological characterization 131

8.2 Brief history of the Chinese script 132

8.3 Correlation between script and language 136

8.4 Merits of the Chinese script 139

8.5 Motivation for reform 141

8.6 Approaches to script reform 146

9 Simplification of the traditional writing system 148

9.1 Approaches to simplification 148

9.2 Simplification before the twentieth century 148

9.3 Simplification in the twentieth century 150

9.4 Gains and problems 157

9.5 Objections to the Second Scheme 159

9.6 Simplification of script outside mainland China 162

10 Phonetization of Chinese 164

10.1 Efforts by Western missionaries 164

10.2 Schemes proposed by native Chinese 165

10.3 Groupings of schemes 167

10.4 Five representative schemes 178

10.5 Phonetization in Taiwan and elsewhere 189

11 Use and reform of the Chinese writing system: present and future 191

11.1 Recent developments 191

11.2 Change in policy on script reform 196

11.3 Prospects of script reform 197

12 Conclusion 202

Notes 204

References 210