The Pro-temporal And Pro-spatial Differences Between English And Chinese Writing Systems And Linguistic Structures

Writing and language are the two kinds of most important signs in a nation’s communication system.These two kinds of signs are the external representations of a nation’s way of thinking and also shaped by it,reflecting its cognitive mode.Meanwhile,the writing system is bound to reveal the structural characteristics of the language it records,i.e.there is an interrelationship of preference between a certain language and its writing system,and the use of the writing system and language εan in turn impose a fossilization upon a nation’s way of thinking.Previous relevant studies tend to focus mainly on either the writing system or the language in isolation with the lack of a certain theoretical framework that can provide a unified account of both of them,and thus the further analysis of the interrelationship between the writing system and the linguistic structures in English and Chinese is acutely needed.In light of this,the present study adopts the view of pro-temporal and pro-spatial differences between English and Chinese proposed by Wang Wenbin（2013,2019）,employing the method of contrastive analysis to address the following three main research questions:Firstly,what is the interrelationship between the writing system and the language it records in English and Chinese?Secondly,how is the correlation between the writing system and the language it records manifested on different linguistic levels in the two languages?Thirdly,what is the root cause for the correlation between the writing system and the language it records in both of the languages?Following the above three questions,this study looks into the differences of the writing systems and linguistic structures including the lexical structure,the sentential structure and the textual structure in English and Chinese,lays a heavy stress on the compatible relationship between their writing systems and linguistic structures,and attempts to find out the root cause for the distinctions.The findings of the study are presented as follows:Firstly,on the surface,the alphabetic writing system of English fits in well with its rich phonetic changes as well as morphological inflections,while ideographic writing system of Chinese agrees with the nature of Chinese as a monosyllabic and isolating language.But beneath the surface,this study assumes that the linear combinations of letters and the linguistic structures of English are homogeneous in nature,e.g.both of them are of pro-temporality in nature,while the spatial configuration of the Chinese character-formation is isomorphic to the linguistic structures of Chinese,i.e.they are of pro-spatiality in nature.Secondly,the above-mentioned isomorphic relations are manifested on all levels of linguistic structures in English and Chinese including the lexical level,the sentential level and the textual level.On the whole,English writings belong to the phonetic writing system,and the linear combinations of letters demonstrate the one-dimensional and temporal features.Different levels of English linguistic structures also show a protemporal tendency for the verb-centered peculiarity and the linear,connected,continuous and hypotactic structures.Chinese writings belong to the ideographic writing system and its character-formation displays the three-dimensional features of spatial configuration.Chinese compound ideographs and different levels of Chinese linguistic structures demonstrate the preference for the entity-centered peculiarity and the chunky,juxtapositional,montage and paratactic structures with both of them coming down in one line of being pro-spatial in nature.Thirdly,the root cause for the isomorphic relations between the writing system and the language it records in English and Chinese stems from the pro-temporal and pro-spatial differences existing in the English and Chinese nations’ underlying modes of thinking,i.e.English is a language of pro-temporality while Chinese is a language of pro-spatial ity.To conclude,the research on the interrelationship between the writing system and the language is an important topic in the study of language.This study employs the view of pro-temporal and pro-spatial differences between English and Chinese to provide a unified account of their writing systems and linguistic structures,which is considered to be conducive to uncovering the essential differences between the two languages and deepening our understanding of the interrelationship between the writing system and the language.