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Spoken Chinese

“Chinese” means many things, and we can avoid much confusion by defining the term
at the outset. When used here in a linguistic sense, unless otherwise identified, for
example, as “Chinese character” or “Chinese writing,” or understood as such in context,
the term “Chinese” always refers to language that is, was, or can be spoken. Linguists
understand language to be a conventional body of a abstract relationships that depends
primarily on speech for its concrete realization and on a phonological component for much
of its internal structure and functioning. Chinese writing, in other words, is not the language.
It is a system for representing statements generated by the language.

Arguably, the conventions for writing Chinese can be included in an expanded definition
of “Chinese,” much as the protocols for producing speech from an abstract phonological
component are. In this configuration, statements are represented visually through the
application of one set of rules or verbally through another set. The mechanisms for writing
are located somewhere in the literate user’s psyche. Moreover, there is solid empirical
evidence that linguistic elements can be accessed from visible stimuli without the
intervention of phonology. There is, nonetheless, a qualitative difference between the two
subsystems, speech and writing. Absent writing, language can still function. Phonology,
in contrast, must exist for language to work, even if only as a code for short-term memory
and as the basis for the phonemes and graphemes used in the language’s representation.
While Chinese writing is formally separable from language, the phonological precursors
leading to Chinese speech are not.

There is another reason why we can distinguish wr5iting from language (keeping in mind
that all writing is based on language), while retaining speech as an integral part of the
latter. Speech results from the application of rules to phonological units that have their
origin within the linguistic apparatus of each user. Although the configuration of these
units and the types of rules applied may vary from one individual and language to the
next, the basic parameters of the process are fixed. Their steps and order apply generally ,
and hence are considered a part of language. This is not so with writing. Where writing
maps onto language is a matter of convention. Although the present convention for writing
Chinese is to represent that language’s syllables and morphemes (basic units of
meaningful sound), there is no reason why statements in Chinese cannot be expressed
visibly through different conventions that are keyed to other levels, such as
morphophonemes (phonemes that belong to the same morpheme) or phonemes,
without changing the substance of what is communicated. There is no need for Chinese
language to have the particular written representation people have given it, or for that
matter to have any written representation at all.

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