Language Interaction in China
中国语言的互动
Jun Wang

Abstract 摘要
With social, economic and cultural developments, the ethnic minorities that boast of writing systems raise the question of language standardization. For example, it is of relevance in practice to address the theoretical issue of how to treat the phenomena of the coexistence and coapplication of loan-words, grammatically different word orders and the heterogeneity of alien and indigenous constructions. Here we adduce some examples of the interaction between southern Han dialects and Kam-Tai languages, showing that despite the relevance of socio-cultural factors in language change, the assimilation of outside lexical items and syntactic structures does not mean the cultural backwardness of the host ethnic group. It is suggested that a realistic approach should be adopted to undertake language standardization with the objective of forwarding the development of and interflow in economy, technology and culture.