Functions of phonetic writing in Chinese

In contrast to the great majority of modern languages which have adopted phonographic writing systems, Chinese retains a logographic writing system that has been in continuous use for more than 4,000 years. At the same time, tremendous efforts have been made during the past century to design and promote a phonetic writing for Chinese. The scale of this endeavor to shift from a logographic to a phonographic writing is unequaled in the world (d. DeFrancis 1950, 1984a, 1989, Zhou 1979, 1992, Chen 1999). In the relatively short period between 1958 and 1980, as recorded in Zhou (1992:214), as many as 1,667 schemes of phonetic writing of Chinese were submitted to the language planning institution in Beijing. Given the scale of this sustained effort, it is worthwhile to examine the linguistic undertaking, in its various dimensions, as a case study on the design of a new writing system for a language with a time-honored literary tradition, in contrast to a previously unwritten language as discussed in Smalley (1964), Sjoberg (1966), Venezky (1970), Mithun (1992), inter alia. This chapter offers an in-depth analysis of the major functions that various schemes are intended to perform in relation to the traditional script. It is established in this chapter that new writing systems for Chinese are mainly designed to fulfill one or more of four functions - namely auxiliary, supplementary, alternative, and superseding. With influential schemes for illustration, this chapter discusses each of the four functions expected by these schemes, giving special reference to the problems of the traditional script addressed by each scheme, and the linguistic and extra-linguistic implications of their solutions. It also examines the attitudes on the part of language planning institutions towards these schemes