Volume 13, No 1
Article 文章
Abstract 摘要
It is a well-known fact that Chinese morphemes are overwhelmingly monosyllabic. As a variety of Chinese, Taiwanese also shares this characteristic. There are two types of exceptions to this general rule, exemplified in Mandarin by the polysyllabic morphemes húdie ‘butterfly’ and bōli ‘glass’, and by the subsyllabic béng ‘don’t’, a contraction of the disyllabic expression búyòng, It is the purpose of this paper to investigate this second type of exception to the otherwise monosyllabic nature of morphemes in Taiwanese, viz, morphemes that are subsyllabic. For it will be seen that in Taiwanese there are single syllables that contain more than one morpheme.
Abstract 摘要
Numerals and expressions of quantity can function as predicate in both oracle-bone inscriptions and Classical Chinese. This paper analyzes the use of numerals as employed in the pattern Verb + Noun1 + Noun2 + Numeral, where Noun1 stands for the indirect object and Noun2 the direct object of the verb. An example of this pattern is 来甲午侑伐上甲十 (on coming jiawu day/ (we) should offer/Shang Jia/beheaded-human-victims/ten). Three different interpretations concerning the use of the numeral “ten” are posited: (i) it functions as a main verb, meaning “make (the number) be ten”; (ii) it functions as a predicate, but it is only an elliptical expression of the hypothetically full clause *侑十伐上甲. The sentence as a whole should be represented on the underlying level as *来甲午侑伐上甲, 侑十伐上甲, from which the underlined portions are deleted. Interpreted thus, the sentence may be understood as “*When/if on coming jiawu day (we) offer beheaded-human-victims to Shang Jia, (we) should offer ten (of the aforementioned) beheaded-human-victims (to) Shang Jia”; (iii) it functions as a quantitative complement to the verb, embodying a syntactic type in which two pieces of new information, the direct object and its number, are incorporated into a single sentence. The sentence may be understood as “On coming jiawu day (we) should offer Shang Jia beheaded-human-victims (numbering/amounting to) ten.” The paper discusses the problem of deletion in the oracle-bone language, paying particular attention to the criterion of new vs. old/shared information which led to the deletion. It argues, in effect, that the numeral “ten” is the necessary residue of the underlying form *伐十伐 and that the optimum choice among the three interpretations is (iii).
Abstract 摘要
Chinese and American subjects were requested to identify speech tokens from four different Tone 1-Tone 2 continua. These continua represented a word/word continuum ([FEI1]-[FEI2]), a word/nonword continuum ([HEI1]-[HEI2]), a nonword/word continuum ([SHEI1]-[SHEI2], a nonword/nonword continuum ([DEI1]-[DEI2]) in Mandarin. Results showed that the tonal category boundaries of Chinese subjects were shifted in the direction of the nonword endpoints for both the word/nonword and nonword/word continua relative to the word/word continuum. The American subjects showed no such shift. These data were interpreted as suggesting that the lexical status of a speech token may significantly affect phonetic processing.
Abstract 摘要
The study of a secret language may reveal the phonological structure of the source language. There are dialects in the Taiwanese secret language, three of which are described in this paper. The rules of the secret language are somewhat complex. Although the general rule is similar to the ones in the secret languages of other Chinese dialects, yet some modifications to the general rule are unique to Taiwanese, such as nasal rules, a stop-ending rule, a dental sonorant rule, and a syllabic nasal rule. For formalization three main types of rules are required to derive the secret language from the source language: (1) reduplication, (2) first syllable adjustment and (3) second syllable adjustment. Each type of rule may contain two subrules, which in turn may be further subdivided. Implications of the study of the secret language include the following. (1) The bipartite division of the Taiwanese syllable into the initial and final by the secret language is essentially the same as the fanqie system in traditional Chinese phonology. (2) The way the nasal rule of the secret language operates indicates that the feature of nasality is a property of the entire syllable. (3) Evidence in the secret language shows that the dentals are more neutral than the labials or velars, and this may have bearing on phonological universals.
从中古汉语到现代粤语(第三部分)
Matthew Y. Chen 陈渊泉; John Newman
Abstract 摘要
“In this sequel to From Middle Chinese to Modern Peking (Chen 1976a), we set out to investigate the phonological history of another major dialect of China. Owing to the length of the manuscript, this report will appear in three contiguous issues containing, respectively, the following main sections: I-IV, V-VIII and IX-X. The footnotes go together with the corresponding sections, while the references and appendices summing up the sound correspondences are relegated to the very end of the monograph-length article. The overall organization of the present work is then as follows: Part 1. I. Introduction II. Phonotactic conditions III. Tonal developments IV. Initial Changes Footnotes to sections I-IV Part 2. V. Cantonese Vowel Shift VI. The realignment of inner and outer rimes VII. The genesis of *TRI-SEG VIII. Late allophonic rules Footnotes to sections V-VIII Part 3. IX. Summary of rules and conditions X. Relative chronology Footnotes to sections IX-X References Appendix A. Tone correspondences Appendix B. Initial correspondences Appendix C. Final correspondences.”
Corrigenda 勘误
勘误: 12卷1期（1984）
Project on Linguistic Analysis 语言学分析中心
Report 报告
New Publication 新书
书讯
Project on Linguistic Analysis 语言学分析中心
Review 书评
书评：《广州方言词典》 饶秉才, 欧阳觉亚, 周无忌合编, 香港商务印书, 1981, 49 + 380 页. HK$40.00
Robert S. Bauer 包睿舜
Volume 13, No 2
Abstract 摘要
In the past 20 to 30 years the speech sounds of the suburban areas of Shanghai have changed a great deal. I chose the typical county of Fengxian (奉贤) as the object of my investigation. The old Fengxian vernacular was like that of Songjiang (松江), the historical seat of government; while the new Fengxian vernacular is similar to that of urban Shanghai, the new economic and cultural center. Nearly 20 phonemes are involved in the sound changes, including initials, rimes and tones. Subjects in the 10-25 years age group tend to use the changed sounds to a much higher degree than subjects in the 60-80 or 30-50 age groups. Pre-school children who live with their parents tend to use the more conservative forms. People with more social intercourse show more rapid change than those with more traditional ways of life. None of the sound changes are phonetically gradual; subjects pronounce either the unchanged or the changed form, or have both in free or conditioned variation. Some changes (i.e. h > f) could not possibly be gradual. The sound changes have occurred in some words but not in others in most of the towns and villages. However, the sound changes tend to spread more rapidly in the towns than in the villages. Taking both synchronic and diachronic changes into account, it is found to be simple and accurate to identify subdialect areas on the basis of common features of lexical diffusion of sound change. The Fengxian vernacular subdivides into easily discernible Eastern and Western accents on the basis of patterns of tone sandhi. In the buffer zone between these two regions the following forms of sound mixing can be identified: 1) In some places all character groups are read either in the Western or the Eastern accent. 2) In other places some character groups are read in the Western accent, others in the Eastern accent and still others in either. In conclusion, it is found that the sound changes of the Shanghai region across age-groups and over geographical regions are phonetically abrupt but lexically gradual.
Abstract 摘要
This paper is a localistic lexicase analysis of the case-marking system of Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin case-marking devices include word order, localistic verb subcategories, derived and underived prepositions, and free and bound relator nouns. Mandarin relator nouns, relator noun pseudocompounds, and prepositions are subcategorized by a set of localistic features, and the possible syntactic combinations of preposition plus ‘location word’ are treated as an integrated system of virtual matrices of localistic features which characterize the grammatical properties of Mandarin oblique actants. Finally, two of the bound relator nouns, -.shàng and -.lǐ, are found to qualify as case inflection suffixes.
Abstract 摘要
This study investigated the evaluation and integration of pitch height and pitch contour in the perception of tones in Mandarin Chinese. A fuzzy logical model of perception was used as a framework for the study. An important theoretical assumption was that speech sounds are perceived in terms of continuous acoustic properties. The experiment provided an assessment of the relative importance of the F0 height and the F0 contour during the vowel of a syllable to tone perception. Both the F0 contour and the F0 height influenced the perceptual recognition of tone. The cues were about equally effective. As in the perception of many other contrasts, lexical tone appears to be recognized on the basis of, at least, two cues, and the influence of one cue is the largest when the other cue is relatively ambiguous.
Abstract 摘要
Based on the evidence we present, we propose a model for the directionality of the merging of the syllable nasal endings, in which we claim that (1) -m > -n and – > -n are two major tendencies of merging; (2) -n > – being another major tendency indicates that nasal vowels in modern Chinese dialects have not necessarily developed from only -V finals. It follows that the process of nasal ending attrition does not operate on the velar nasal endings alone; and (3) -n > – is, in fact, a minor tendency. We also show that the merging of syllable nasal endings in Chinese can be either conditioned (-n > -; – > -n) or unconditioned (-n > -; -m > -n). Thus, we refute the theory of unidirectionality of the merging of the syllable nasal endings in Chinese as proposed by Chen (1972,1973).
Abstract 摘要
Two early sources for the Shàowǔ 邵武 dialect are examined in light of the author’s field notes. A surprisingly accurate description of Shàowǔ tones is already found in an 1878 article. The 1901 Shàowǔfǔzhì 邵武府志 contains a number of Shaowu forms along with forms from other closely related dialects. Material from both these early sources is found to be readily interpretable in terms of modern dialect forms.
用 “Chinese Editor” 进行汉字处理
Robert S. Bauer 包睿舜
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