Language and Linguistics - Volume 24, Issue 4, 2023

Probability and frequency are becoming increasingly important in phonological analysis. This article reviews contemporary perspectives on how phonological theory addresses gradient phonological patterns shaped by probability and frequency, drawing on theories of the lexicon, grammar, and statistics. After examining their motivations, we show how these diverse theoretical perspectives have been applied to a variety of problems in core phonology, including phonotactics, morphophonology, sound change, phonological categorization, and language development. Our review of theory and applications supports a growing consensus in the field that phonological theories must reckon with probability. Our review also identifies problems stemming from a lack of cohesion in the field, and suggests potential solutions to these problems.

Fieldwork from the past decade has yielded new data from a cluster of languages in Western Sichuan (China), resulting in new observations relevant for the understanding of Tangut grammar. In this paper, I intend to present morphosyntactic evidence pointing to the Tangut language’s membership within the Horpa taxon, located within the larger Gyalrongic group of the Qiangic branch of Sino-Tibetan. Tangut exclusively shares with Horpa languages cognates that are far too peculiar to be the result of mere chance. By successively considering the verbal, nominal, and postpositional domains, the present paper highlights evidence that links Tangut to Horpa, while proposing new paths to the understanding of grammatical categories of Tangut proper, such as orientational/aspectual preverbs.1

This paper revisits a well-established areal phenomenon in Mainland Southeast Asia and Northern Europe involving an element, ACQ(UIRE), that functions as a lexical verb meaning ‘to get or acquire’ and appears, as a functional item, in numerous seemingly unrelated constructions such as modal constructions, resultatives, descriptive complementation, and focus constructions. This paper presents a generative framework for the postverbal ACQ-structures in Hong Kong Cantonese involving the marker dak1. The proposed framework takes into account four readings of postverbal ACQ-sentences, namely potential, permission, descriptive, and focus, and argues that all postverbal ACQ-structures in Cantonese share the same basic configuration in which the ACQ heads a vP-internal ModP which expresses possibility modality and selects a small clause XP. The postverbal ACQ takes an AspP as complement which indicates the (non-)realization of the projected endpoint. The interpretational difference and other structural variations are boiled down to the three parameters realized in featural terms as: [±Realised] on Asp⁰, [±Possibility] and [±Deontic] on Mod⁰. The analysis also provides an explanation for several long-standing issues, including the verb-copying phenomenon, the co-occurrence of dak1 with the modal auxiliary ho2ji5, the distribution of the A-not-A form and negation, and the across-the-board aspectual incompatibility in postverbal ACQ-structures. The parametric framework demonstrates how apparently unrelated ACQ-constructions are closely connected with each other and provide a testable model to account for cross-linguistic variation found in other ACQ languages.

This study, based on the analysis of historical corpus data, investigates the diachronic development of the Mandarin modal auxiliary wufa and establishes implications both for the grammaticalization of modals and for grammaticalization theory in general. Specifically, our study shows the following results: (1) The grammaticalization of wufa is characterized by coalescence, paradigmaticization, obligatorification, fixation, desemanticization, decategorialization and divergence. (2) Underlying mechanisms at work are structural reanalysis, later followed by syntactic expansion and host-class expansion. (3) The grammaticalization of wufa on the one hand confirms the diachronic path proposed in previous studies, viz., from root possibility to epistemic possibility; within the development of root possibility, however, it demonstrates a distinct path—from participant-external possibility to participant-internal possibility; it is suggested that an important driving force behind this peculiar development path is the Chinese cultural preference for collectivism. (4) The lexical source of modal wufa is a verb-complement sequence (rather than a single full verb).

The Chinese string composed of {bei 被 + verb + jiang 將 + qu 去} is a rare, unique, unproductive, informal usage which, to date, has remained virtually unexplored. The present paper attempts to sketch its pre-twelfth century evolution by analyzing examples collected from various sources, but now from sources digitalized by CBETA (Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association). This paper begins by investigating the constituents in order to determine a core structure. It argues that jiang and qu are not two discrete elements but one single unit, reanalyzed in a new formula, {bei + verb + jiangqu} to replace the traditional notation {bei + verb + jiang + qu}.

Regarding the evolution of this collocation, the paper periodizes four stages of development. (1) The earliest examples appear in the fifth century, and they are of the {bei + verb₁ + verb₂ (+ verb₃)} order, in which jiangqu occupies either the second or third verbal slot. (2) Seventh century examples are showing signs of change, allowing, for the first time, an agent to be inserted between bei and the verb. (3) The eighth century witnesses a radical usage shift in which jiangqu has been demoted to a SIFE (“Semantically Impoverished Functional Element”), resulting in a new passive order {bei + verb + SIFE}. (4) The evolution continues in the ninth through eleventh centuries, becoming more complex, though somewhat dormant. This paper thus contributes to discussion of an understudied and thorny topic: How to segment short strings of Chinese characters. A few guidelines are suggested, and it is noted that some strings consisting of “verb, jiang, and qu” have been wrongly dissected: {verb + jiang + qu} must be rendered {verb + jiangqu}.