Sifting And Standardizing Of Modern Chinese Variants

The research of variants of modern Chinese is an important and urgent work in carrying out "The Law of Chinese Current Spoken and Written Language" and realizing the standardization of spoken and written language. At present this work is gradually going deep. Although big advances has made in this work, great differences all the same exist. This paper tries to study some questions in sifting and standardizing variants of modern Chinese in new theory.The first part is about the definition and classifying of variants. We elaborate these questions in three aspects."The Definition of Variants and the Theory on Which the Definition is Given" is about the pondering of theory which the variants of Chinese words is studied according to. We try to use the theory of prototypical category of cognitive linguistic to define the modern Chinese variants instead of traditional theory of categorization; "The Relationship Between Variants and Critical Categories" mainly explains that the boundary of a variant as a prototype is usually indistinct and the relationship is very complicated between a variant and a variant form of Chinese character, a word of foreign origin, a word of dialect, a word of imitating a sound. They are different but have close links; "The classification of variants as a prototype" divides the variants into three types according to their representative degrees: representative variants, second-rate representative variants and non-representative variants.The second part is about the complicacies of the reasons to the variants and the ineluctability of their producing. We explain these questions in two aspects.Firstly, we extensively and ail-roundly discuss the complex reasons of the variants' producing in many ways. They include the longitudinal development of language, the transverse relationship and the limitations of Chinese character in recording Chinese; Secondly, we illustrate the ineluctability of the variants' producing from three ways: internal possibilities, internal driving power and the chances which the complex relationship among the forms, pronunciations and meanings of Chinese characters gives.The third part definitude the meanings of the standardization of modern Chinese variants. It is a course of evaluating and choosing different writing forms in considering various factors. On the basis of the definition we suggest three principles about sifting and standardizing modem Chinese variants. They are the principles of classifying, guiding and developing.