汉字拼义理论:心理学对汉字本质的新定性

Meaning-spelling Theory of the Chinese Characters:Insight into the Nature of Written Chinese from the Perspective of Cognitive Psychology

当今世界上所有的文字都是拼音文字,使用几十个字母来拼写所有的词汇。唯一的例外,就是使用数以万计个方块字的汉字。中文能否拼音化,即废除汉字,改用一般通用的字母来书写呢?这个问题虽经百年纷争,至今仍未解决。本文提出汉字拼义理论,指出汉字系统在词汇水平上是世界上独一无二的拼义文字,它切合了认知心理学和脑科学中根本性的语义网络原理,具有稳固的科学基础。汉字充分利用了人脑的视觉加工能力,与拼音文字相比,是一种更为彻底的视觉文字。拼音和拼义文字是成熟、高效的人类文字仅有的两个逻辑类型,不能相互转换。汉字超越了记录口语的工具性,在极大程度上塑造了汉语,使得成熟的现代汉语,必须以汉字为其书面语言,这是汉语不能使用拼音文字的根本原因。

Thousands of written languages in the world are all alphabetic except written Chinese,which uses a large number of characters. There has been a debate for over hundred years as to whether Chinese characters can be replaced with Roman alphabetic system of writing. This paper presents a new theory which points out that written Chinese at the vocabulary level is a meaning-spelling or pinyi system. This view is consistent with the semantic network principle in cognitive psychology and neural science and has solid scientific basis. Chinese characters have made full use of the visual processing capacity of human brain and this language,in comparison with alphabetic writing,is much more visual. This theory also holds that alphabetic writing and Chinese meaning-spelling writing represent two and the only two matures and efficient logical forms of human writing and they can not be substituted with each other. Far from being simply a tool for recording spoken Chinese,written Chinese has shaped the evolution of spoken Chinese to such an extent that modern spoken Chinese cannot live without Chinese characters,which is the fundamental reason why written Chinese cannot be romanized.