On the Supradialectal Function of the Chinese Characters

The assumption that the character have a function of supradialect,originated from the early western researchers for Sinology,has been in vogue within the circles of theoretical and dialectal study of the language in China.It is generally accepted by the theoretical and dialectal linguists in that it is coincident with the opinions in the traditional linguistics about characters,the criticism about characters during the New Cultural Movement, as well as the experiences using character system to investigate diaects and the reestablishment of the middle ancient pronunciation.In fact,this opinion violates completely the accepted theory about colloquial language and written characters in the linguistic field,so the explanation that Chinese characters possess particularityis not acceptable. We can't read out the dialect vocabulary,dialect grammar and pure dialect pronunciation from characters.Therefore ,the author thinks that the characters do not have any function of supradialect,it is the written symbol system of the language to perform,this function.And dialect pronunciation of characters is the unstandardized pronunciation of the common language.