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Lettered Words and Roman Letter Characters in Chinese Writing: A Study Of Alphabetic Writing in Chinese Newswires

Riha, Helena

Abstract Details

2008, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Linguistics.

As Chinese society continues to internationalize, Mandarin Chinese is exhibiting considerable influence from Chinese-English language contact. One effect of this contact is the increasing use of roman letters in Chinese writing. Whereas Chinese has traditionally been written almost exclusively with Chinese characters, roman letters are now commonly used as well.

The mixed use of Chinese and roman scripts presents an interesting problem from a linguistic standpoint. While English writing is morphophonemic, Chinese writing is morphosyllabic, creating a mismatch between the two writing systems with respect to the linguistic units they write. I explore the use of roman letters in Chinese writing to determine what linguistic units roman letters can write in Chinese and how the mismatch between the writing systems is resolved. I take the view that analogy is central to the comprehension of imported forms. The receiving group has to find "something understandable in terms of their own patterns" (Herskovits 1938) to accept foreign forms.

I examined the use of roman letters in the PRC and Taiwan portions of the Chinese Gigaword Third Edition, a corpus of Chinese newswires, analyzing roman letter strings in the corpus to determine what types of linguistic units roman letters write in Chinese newswires. My findings indicate that roman letters are used most frequently to write imported abbreviations and also hybrid forms containing individual roman letters and Chinese characters. I conclude that Chinese speakers prefer to use roman letters as a new type of Chinese character that is usually pronounced with its letter name and that stands apart visually from the surrounding units by fitting into the equidimensional square of Chinese writing. The letter may also have an independent meaning as a morpheme.

I also measured the rate of growth in roman letter use in PRC and Taiwan newswires from 1991 to 2006. I found that roman letters are used more in Taiwan than in the PRC, which I suggest can be attributed to Taiwan's longer period of exposure to English, as well as to political and social differences between the two societies. Spelled out words are also more frequent in Taiwan, for the same reasons. Both Taiwan and the PRC show increasing use of roman letters over time, but the rate of increase in Taiwan is faster.

My study shows that alphabetic writing is adapted to the patterns of Chinese writing in both societies. As speakers gain familiarity with English, however, roman letters are also increasingly used in an English-like way to spell out words.

Mary E. Beckman, PhD (Advisor)
Brian D. Joseph, PhD (Committee Member)
Marjorie K.M. Chan, PhD (Committee Member)
J. Marshall Unger, PhD (Committee Member)
212 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Riha, H. (2008). Lettered Words and Roman Letter Characters in Chinese Writing: A Study Of Alphabetic Writing in Chinese Newswires [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1222045556

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Riha, Helena. Lettered Words and Roman Letter Characters in Chinese Writing: A Study Of Alphabetic Writing in Chinese Newswires. 2008. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1222045556.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Riha, Helena. "Lettered Words and Roman Letter Characters in Chinese Writing: A Study Of Alphabetic Writing in Chinese Newswires." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1222045556

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)