Presentation Abstract for the
CLTA-GNY 2008 ANNUAL
CONFERENCE &
Sixth
Saturday, May 10
The
Facilitating compliance with
Pinyin orthography standards for teachers and learners of Chinese through an
algorithmic solution
Peter Leimbigler
Professor,
Consultant
Compliance with the
standard of writing is a major task for native speakers and learners of any
language. In the case of Chinese, especially when involving textbooks and other
publications requiring a phonetic transcription, the task is even more
difficult, as writing the same text in Chinese characters (Hanzi)
and in the standard phonetic transcription (Hanyu
Pinyin) challenge the writer in totally different ways. In this presentation I
focus on the spacing rules of Hanyu Pinyin, in
particular on the question how we can enhance implementation of the Pinyin
orthography standard that was proclaimed in 1996 as Zhōngwén Pīnyīn zhèngcífǎ jīběn guīzé 中文拼音正词法基本规则 by the China State Bureau of Quality and
Technical Supervision of the State Council of China.
In my presentation I use
everyday sample sentences to show how the rules, when implemented as software
algorithms, can help teachers and learners to comply with the Pinyin
orthography standards. For example, you will have to explain to your students the logic behind the following
Pinyin renderings, in particular the “le” spacing:
走进来了两位客人 。
Zou jinlai le
liang wei
keren.
来了两位客人 。
Laile liang
wei keren.
客人来了。 Keren lai le.
Is the spacing right or
wrong? - There is a lot of potential
for confusion for teachers and learners alike, because we are dealing with syntactic
rules which usually cannot be readily looked up in a dictionary.
As a further problem
area in Hanyu Pinyin orthography I discuss the
spacing standard for rendering fixed four-character expressions, and the
inconsistencies in spacing and the use of the hyphen in such expressions.
The research for this study,
including the linguistic basis for the software algorithms used in my
presentation, was mainly done on the basis of the works mentioned in the
references below, with many contributions in theory and practice from my
colleagues and my research team.
As lexicographer and
developer of Chinese language software who has worked with the training
departments of Canadian, British, German and
References:
Zhou, Youguang (2003). The
Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts
(Pathways to Advanced Skills
Series, vol. 8), translated by Zhang Liqing.
Yin, Binyong
& Felley, Mary (1990). Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and
Orthography.
Yin, Binyong
(Ed., 2002). Xinhua pinxie
cidian (Xinhua dictionary
of pinyin spelling).
Zhou, Minglang & Sun, Hongkai
(Eds., 2004). Language Policy in the People's Republic of
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Dr. Peter
Leimbigler - Author information
Title of presentation:
Facilitating compliance
with Pinyin orthography standards for teachers and learners of Chinese through
an algorithmic solution
Name of the author:
Peter
Leimbigler, Ph.D.
Email address:
Phone numbers:
819-777-2394
613-203-1236
Affiliation:
Professor,
Consultant
(