THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF CHINA’S LANGUAGE RESOURCES

Abstract

Forty years have passed since the concept of language resources was proposed. In the 1980s, Australia formulated the National Language Policy based on this concept. Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has started to put this concept into practice. National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center was established, and projects such as the Chinese Language Audio Database Resources and the National Project of Chinese Language Resource Preservation were carried out. China has successfully held International Conference on Role of Linguistic Diversity in Building a Global Community with Shared Future in cooperation with the UNESCO and has adopted the Yuelu Proclamation. China has been outstanding in advocating the concept of language resources and implementing language protection. Research on China’s language resources is carried out on the basis of the practices of language planning. The focus of research has moved from the nature of language as resources and their classification to the understanding of the functions of language resources. This article offers a detailed historical survey of the theories and practices of China’s language resources. It classifies language resources into three categories: oral, written, and derivative resources, and analyzes three functional domains of language resources: language reservation, language information processing, and language learning. In addition, this article proposes the view of language knowledge and regards language as not only a semiotic system, but also a bank for storing human language knowledge system and cultural system.