• Pattern 1 describes cognitive architecture of Chinese character recognition: graphic input activates phonology and then semantics in a dynamic interaction, not a strict linear path. Time-course activation studies, lexical activation evidence, and analyses of orthographic units support this view [1], [5], [9], [8].

• Pattern 2 highlights the orthography-phonology interface in Chinese reading, emphasizing recurrent orthographic units (stroke-patterns) as functional constituents; readers rely on these units for rapid recognition, with phonology inferred from graphic cues and robust visual processing [9], [1], [8].

• Pattern 3 tracks the historical development of Chinese writing and syntax: tracing the origin/evolution of the writing system, the canonical wen, and the emergence of grammatical markers in spoken Chinese (e.g., definite article) to illuminate co-evolution of writing and syntax [11], [12], [7], [4].

• Pattern 4 analyzes dialectal variation and tonal/meter patterns in Chinese varieties to reveal syntactic/phonological diversification: Mandarin–Shanghai metrical differences, systematic dialect description, and emergence of syntactic features across dialects [14], [4], [7].