Comparison Of Chinese Characters And English Words

As to the matter of the relationship between different writing systems and languages, characters and words, it is generally considered that language is the symbol representing concept, while writing is the symbol expressing language, and that language and writing are respectively the referred and referent. Accordingly, Chinese characters belong to the sphere of the writing system, while the word is a unit of language.This kind of understanding has become the linguistic"common sense"over the past one hundred years. However, this "common sense" is doubted, at home and abroad, by more and more well-known scholars, including renowned linguists and philosophers. "There are no words, but different types of word-concepts in Chinese "(Zhao Yuanren, 1975); "There isn't a satisfying definition for Chinese word because there isn't such a thing at all in Chinese."(LüShuxiang, 1963); "The character is no mere writing, it is also an issue of language, the basic structural unit of the Chinese language" (Xu Tongqiang, 2004); "the writing is beginning to go beyond the the scope of the concept of language. It is no longer the special form, derived form, sub form of the general language. It is no longer the represent of the surface, no longer a different copy of the referent, no longer a referent of the referent. The concept of the writing is going beyond the scope of the language. "(Derrida, 1967)On the principle of being realistic and faithful to actual fact, and leaving out the linguistic"common sense", this article makes a comparison between the Chinese character, which is generally considered to be the "writing", and the English word, which is generally thought to be within the scope of the language, which may, on the one hand, provide some kind of reference to make clear the relationship between writing and language, especially the relationship between Chinese characters and the Chinese language, on the other hand, help us understand the features of the Chinese and English language and provide guidance and useful suggestions for the teaching of the two languages. This article consists of three chapters.Chapter I, "Contrastive Study of Chinese and English Primary Word", first distinguishes in Chinese characters"Chuwen"and"Ziruzi", and in English words"Primary word"and"Secondary word", and argues that Chinese"Chuwen"and English"Primary word"are of the same nature, which can be called"Primary word". Then this chapter tries to make a comparison between the primary words of the two languages. Through comparison this article finds that between Chinese and English"Primary word"exit the following three antitheses: "formal" vs. "phonic" in the way of meaning-expressing,"descriptive"vs."prescriptive"in the manner of word-generation and"spatial"vs."temporal"in the way of word-expanding.Chapter II, "Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and English Secondary Word", researches into the particular measures in which Chinese and English secondary words come into being. This article finds that there are four identical measures in which Chinese and English secondary words are formed, namely, combination, addition, contraction and transformation, which appear respectively in Chinese and English as four antithetic pairs of ways of propagation: association and compounding (combination), pictophonetic and derivation (addition), formal reduction and phonic reduction (contraction), formal and phonic transformation (transformation). This difference is the embodiment of the different thinking modes and cognitive patterns existing in the people of Chinese and English.Chapter III, "Significance of the Contrastive Study between Chinese Characters and English Words", summarizes the significance of the article as: through a good grip of the characteristics of the Chinese character and the English word, on the one hand, to advance the study of General Linguistics and on the other hand, to provide guidance for the teaching of the two languages.