Structural Features of Chinese Language

Chinese language is quite different from many western languages in various structural features. It is not alphabetic. Large number of Chinese characters are ideographic symbols. The monosyllabic structure, the open vocabulary nature, the flexible wording structure with tones, and the flexibilities in word ordering are good examples of the structural features of Chinese language. It is believed that better results and performance will be obtainable in developing Chinese spoken language processing technology, if such structural features of the language can be well considered. This paper reviews such structural features of Chinese language, presents an integrated framework for Chinese spoken language processing technology developments based on such structural features, considers the general trend toward a future network era, and summarizes the current status on various spoken language processing tasks including dictation systems, information retrieval, dialogue systems, and text-to-speech synthesis.