Journal of Chinese Linguistics vol. 20 (1992) 中国语言学报 20 卷 (1992)
Volume 20, No 1
Article 文章
Abstract 摘要
Among the five major dialect-groups of modern Chinese:
1. Northern Mandarin, e.g. Pekinese
2. Wu, e.g. the Suzhou dialect and, more recently, Shanghainese
3. Hakka, e.g. the Moiyan (Meixian) dialect
4. Min, e.g. the Fuzhou and Amoy dialect
5. Yue, e.g. Cantonese
the Hakka dialects usually draw the least attention of modern linguists. Thus, studies on the Hakka are often only added toward the very end of a list of papers at conferences or in collected essays on Chinese dialects, apparently in order to complete the coverage of the major dialect-groups of Chinese.
Abstract 摘要
Grammatical relations such as head, argument and modifier are found to be crucial to the application of phrase-level tone sandhi rules in the Fuzhou dialect. Modifiers (but not arguments) preceding the head can undergo tone sandhi, as can heads preceding arguments (but not modifiers). Previous analyses by Chan, Wright and Shih are discussed, as are the theoretical implications of the present hypothesis.
Abstract 摘要
How to analyze the resultative construction in Chinese is one of the long-disputed topics in the literature of Chinese syntax. The issue centers on whether the first verb (VI) or the second verb (V2) should be treated as the head verb in the construction. Six cross-linguistic properties characterizing HEAD are reviewed and five of them are shown to be generalizable to Chinese: semantic functor, subcategorizand, morphosyntactic locus, distributional equivalent, and obligatory element. These properties demonstrate that it is V1, and not V2, that should be analyzed as the head of the resultative construction – – a conclusion which leads to some• satisfying consequences concerning the utility of the discourse information center and the constraint on the verbal subcategorization frame in Chinese.
Abstract 摘要
The qualitative nature of basic processes in reading Chinese texts was examined by analyzing the on-line reading performance of 32 school-labeled disabled and normal Chinese elementary readers in Taipei, Taiwan. Comparisons of oral reading responses were made between these two groups of readers through a process-oriented analysis procedure in which reading errors were categorized with respect to the influences of various cues, such as syntactic, semantic, graphic, and sound cues. Results of the analysis revealed that all readers, both disabled and normal, used various language cues in oral reading suggesting a universal aspect of reading process. However, there were orthography-specific effects due to the unique Chinese writing system. Finally, the analysis indicated that the disabled readers were unable to use the spoken speech as a means of holding seemingly disjoined Chinese characters together. Consequently, they were unable to decipher the intended meaning from printed words as presented in the passage.
Abstract 摘要
Language contact between the Han and non-Han languages of China has often been assumed to be unidirectional (i.e., Han—> non-Han) and limited generally to lexical items, while morphosyntactic interference is believed to be moderate and comparatively recent. However, in the northwestern Chinese dialect of ‘,huh , it will be shown below that in fact the opposite is true: the Linxla dialect consistently retains certain native phonological and lexical features, while undergoing heavy interference in syntax. In this paper three examples illustrating the nature and extent of contact-induced change in the LinxIa dialect are examined. In Section 1 the morphemes for ‘small, little’ of the region’s languages are compared as an illustration of extensive lexicosemantic diffusion resulting in areal convergence. In Section 2 it is concluded that the co-existing markers of the comitative/instrumental in Unxla represent two different types of borrowing: one, a calque on a compound numeral of the Mongolic languages of the region, and the other an outright loan from Mongolic of the Proto-Altaic comitative suffix *-lu. Finally, as an example of significant syntactic and phonological reanalysis, in Section 3 the Linxia postpositional conditional marker is examined. We conclude that this is the result of the combination of certain social and linguistic factors, and that social factors, such as political dominance, may well be the primary determinants of change2. These data provide evidence to support a reanalysis of certain universals of language contact.
Report 报告
New Publication 新书
Currigenda 斟误
Volume 20, No 2
Article 文章
Abstract 摘要
The concept of competing sound changes overlapping in time lies at the heart of lexical diffusion. However, empirical evidence reported to date instantiate, for the most part, only cases of single aborted sound changes. The predicted phenomenon of temporally intersecting phonological pro-cesses has remained elusive. Against this backdrop, this paper documents several cases of residues resulting not merely from aborted sound changes but from the overlapping chain shifts and partial feeding/bleeding relations holding among diachronic processes.
Abstract 摘要
An attempt is made to provide a universal basis for cross-linguistic identification of parts of speech in terms of implicational universals and prototypes. Some classes of Mandarin Chinese words whose assignment to particular parts of speech is controversial are reexamined in light of the proposed universals. The following conclusions are reached: (i) auxiliary verbs are Vs; (ii) most of the so-called `coverbs’ are Ps, but some are Vs; (iii) `localizers’ such as shang I xia / Ii and words such as yrqidn, yrisbis are Ns, not Ps; (iv) the various words that have from time to time been classed as As are Vs and do not even make up a subclass of Vs that can be charac-terized in syntactic terms.
Abstract 摘要
This paper offers a non-movement account of Mandarin Chinese Unbounded Dependencies, including topicalization and relativization. The theory of Functional Uncertainty (Zaenen and Kaplan 1989) in Lexical-functional Grammar is adopted. It is shown that various predictions of movements accounts, such as island constraints, are not borne out in Mandarin. In contrast, the seemingly problematic contrasts between Mandarin and languages observing island constraint can be straight-forwardly accounted for with our functional uncertainty analysis. We also observe that dependencies involving Mandarin object controllers are not allowed, contrary to the prediction of multiple path resolutions in the theory of functional uncertainty. We argue that this is due to a language specific parameter requiring that a dependency ends in a unique function. Formal revisions of theoretical definitions are proposed to account for this parameter as well to reconcile the potential conflict between the functional uniqueness condition and the theory of functional uncertainty.
Abstract 摘要
Proceeding inductively from observations of natural language recorded onto audio tape, this paper compares the range of meanings and frequen-cies of usage in Peking and Taipei Mandarin for eight markers of modality. These markers are xiing, yew, dei, bie, hut, neng, keyi and xing. Among the discoveries made is the fact that Taipei speakers are much more likely to employ specific lexical items, e.g., ydo and hut, to indicate ‘desire’ than are Peking speakers. For Peking speakers, the existence of ‘desire’ is inferred, and hence sufficiently salient in most cases to suppress an inclination to be lexically explicit. Likewise, the semantic range of both ydo and hut incor-porate many more senses in Taipei Mandarin than in Peking Mandarin. For example, in Taipei, yao clearly contains both a sense of ‘must’ and ‘prohi-bition.’ In Peking it is also possible to use yew) in this way, though ‘must’ and ‘prohibition’ are usually expressed instead by dbii and bie respectively. Additionally, in the expression of ‘ability,’ Taipei speakers show a strong tendency to select hut, while Peking speakers show an even stronger ten-dency to utilize ?zing. Finally, in the expression of the Chinese equivalent of `OK,’ Taipei speakers clearly prefer keyi, while Peking speakers usually select xing.
Abstract 摘要
We have studied the pattern of similarities among Chinese dialects, analysing lexical and phonological information using two different tree methods (average linkage and neighbor-joining). Agreement between the two methods was better when lexical, or lexical plus phonological data were used. This implies that lexical changes occur at a more regular rate than phonological changes. The pattern of linguistic similarity was compared with the genetic one, as exemplified by the study of surnames in a recent monograph (Du et al. in press). Surname distances are highly correlated with genetic distances, and, like them, reflect migrational history. We found a statistically signifi-cant correlation between linguistic distance and surname distance. Both languages and surnames are less correlated with geography or with history, namely chronological information of the major episodes of conquest and settlement in China during the last 3000 years. The observed congruence of genetic and linguistic evolution is a con-sequence of the similarity of their mechanisms of transmission. Under certain conditions languages are transmitted vertically (from parents to children), as are genes or surnames. Other mechanisms (horizontal or oblique) may also be involved in the case of languages and, to a lesser ex-tent, of surnames; these mechanisms would tend to obscure the correlation.
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