- Home
- e-Journals
- International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
- Previous Issues
- Volume 1, Issue, 2014
International Journal of Chinese Linguistics - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014
-
A new passive form in Mandarin: Its syntax and implications
Author(s): James C.-T. Huang and Na Liupp.: 1–34 (34)More LessThis paper discusses the syntax, semantics and historical source of the new bèi XX construction in Mandarin from a cross-linguistic perspective. We argue that bèi XX is not a special construction that involves the passivization of intransitive verbs. What is passivized in it is not XX itself but a null light verb with the elementary semantics of a causative, putative or activity predicate that takes XX as its complement or adjunct. Such null light verb constructions are abundant in Old Chinese and English, though often not in passive form. Different from them, the bèi XX construction does not have a grammatical active form. We attribute this difference to the difference between synthetic and analytic languages, and account for it by a parameter in derivational timing. The appearance of the bèi XX construction marks Modern Chinese as being at the early stage of a new cycle of change. The analysis of the bèi XX construction as proposed capitalizes on the role of light verb syntax as being the real essence of grammar, and lends important support to the non-projectionist theories of syntax-lexicon mapping such as Distributed Morphology.
-
The strict-sloppy reading of reflexives and pronouns in child Mandarin
Author(s): Ruya Li and Jianhua Hupp.: 35–70 (36)More LessThis paper investigates Mandarin-speaking children’s sensitivity to the strict-sloppy reading ambiguity of reflexives and pronouns in two coordinate elliptical constructions: the null object construction (NOC) and the Shi-constructions (ShiC). Two questions are addressed: (1) whether the strict reading of reflexives and pronouns are equally accessible to children; and (2) whether the strict reading is more accessible in the NOCs than in the ShiCs, given that the strict reading is pragmatically motivated (Guo et al., 1996; Foley et al., 2003) and that the NOCs are subject to the pragmatic factors (Xu, 2003). We examined 4-year-old Mandarin-speaking children and adults and found that children were sensitive to the interpretative idiosyncrasies of the two pro-forms whereas adults were sensitive to the interpretative discrepancies between the two constructions. Children’s non-adult performance indicates that their knowledge of language at the lexicon-syntax interface develops late in child grammar.
-
Casual speech elision and tone sandhi in Tianjin trisyllabic sequences
Author(s): Lian Hee Weepp.: 71–95 (25)More LessIn the Tianjin dialect, casual utterance of familiar trisyllabic sequences often induces deletion of phonological segments so that for a trisyllabic string, the non-final syllables would merge into a single syllable. This elide-and-merge process interacts with the rich Tianjin tone sandhi system to produce rather complicated patterns. In this paper, casual speech elision is shown to fall out straightforwardly from a model that recognizes morae as associated with segments and also as tone-bearing units. Thus, elision of morae also removes tonal features. While this understanding provides a clear description of the patterns, it also reveals an ordering paradox: sandhi applies before elision in some cases, but after elision in others. The paradox is resolved by favoring the order that produces a contour tone for the merged syllable. An explanation for this can be found if one recognizes that Tianjin is prosodically iambic.
-
Stop codas in Old Chinese and Proto Sino-Tibetan: A lexical diffusion analysis
Author(s): Chenqing Songpp.: 96–135 (40)More LessReconstruction studies of Old Chinese (OC hereafter) and Proto Sino-Tibetan (PST hereafter) have yielded numerous significant discoveries related to the phonological histories of these two ancient languages. Despite recent advancements into OC and PST phonological histories, a few mysteries remain yet unsolved. One such mystery, the ‘stop coda’ problem, is as hotly debated now as it was when it was first raised seventy years ago. This long-running debate focuses on the existence and identity of the ‘stop codas’ in OC and in its parent language, PST. One reason why this debate has failed to reach a satisfactory conclusion is that the reconstruction methodology is limited, which assumes the Neogrammarian law of sound change. This law holds that sound change occurs without exception in every form that meets the structural description. Although this law applies to many sound changes in myriad world languages, it is not the only possible pathway of sound change. In this paper, I will argue that the key to the ‘stop-coda’ problem of OC belongs to another sound change type — lexical diffusion.The organization of the paper is as follows. In Part One, I will introduce the background of the debate over the ‘stop codas’ in OC. Part Two reviews previous opposing analyses of the ‘stop coda’ debate. Part Three details my proposal for a lexical diffusion analysis of the ‘stop coda’ problem based on internal evidence in Chinese. Part Four investigates the problem using the Comparative Method based on external evidence from Tibetan and loan words from Chinese to Sino-Japanese. In Part Five, I will present my solution to the ‘stop coda’ problem, which is based on the analysis in the two preceding sections. Finally, in Part Six, I will discuss the general methodology of phonological reconstruction in light of the sound change mechanism.
-
When cognitive grammar meets functional grammar: Diversified interpretations of shared/similar terms in the two schools
Author(s): Danqing Liupp.: 136–156 (21)More LessThis paper points out that certain frequently used terms in linguistic literature, such as“prominent/salient” and “background/ground”, are in fact interpreted differently or even contrarily in Functional Grammar and Cognitive Grammar. The paper attributes their diversified interpretations to the fundamental differences between these two linguistic schools in terms of paradigm and methodology, i.e. to focus on communicative activities of speech and discourse rules or on cognitive abilities and rules. The paper claims that “prominence” as a concept in cognitive grammar mainly relates to the speaker’s concerns, and can be more specifically reworded as topicality or accessibility since it, while conflicting with the focus-stress pattern, mostly conforms to the syntactic hierarchy of syntactic functions and the accessibility hierarchy of NPs, with the case being that the higher position an element occupies in the syntactic hierarchy the more prominent it is cognitively; “prominence” in Functional Grammar, however, mainly relates to the communicative function and the information status of the relevant elements, which thus can be more specifically reworded as focus or focusing, and it mostly conforms to the focus-stress pattern but conflicts with the syntactic hierarchy, with the case being that the more deeply an element is syntactically embedded the more prominent it is functionally. Some controversial opinions about emphasized elements in certain Chinese constructions might arise from the diversified interpretations of the relevant terms. On this basis, the paper further discusses certain problems existing in the ‘figure-background’ theory in cognitive grammar.
Most Read This Month
Article
content/journals/22138714
Journal
10
5
false

-
-
限定性和汉语主句 [Finiteness and Chinese main clauses]
Author(s): Rint Sybesma (司马翎)
-
-
-
Rethinking tokenization
Author(s): Jinbiao Yang
-
- More Less