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

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.