Asian Languages and Linguistics - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2022

The research question posed in this article is whether the Altaic theory is possible, if it is discussed on the basis of chosen negative forms in Mongolian, Turkish, Manchu and its Sibe dialect. The supporters of the Altaic theory assume that these languages (and some include Japanese, Korean and Ainu to this list (Miller, 1967)) emerged from the same root. The opponents of this theory think that the similarities in these languages have resulted from historical contacts between their speakers (Doerfer, 1966, p.122). This article consists of the analysis of negative forms in various stages of Mongolian, Manchu and Turkish languages carried out on the basis of literary monuments and contemporary resources. The conclusions concerning the possibility of the Altaic theory based on the described negative forms have been presented at the end, accompanied by the Index of negative particles and suffixes.

This article first studies the contrastive properties of Q-adjectives many and few, as well as henduo ‘many’ and henshao ‘few’ in Mandarin from the perspective of their strengths as determiners (Milsark, 1974 & 1977). Although all falling into the weak-determiner category for being existential and indefinite, many/henduo show more properties as leaning towards strong definiteness and universal quantification than few/henshao. Secondly, because of the kind-demoting mass NP nature of Chinese nouns and the fact that Mandarin is a topic-comment pro-drop language, henduo ‘many’ and henshao ‘few’ can appear both in the pre-nominal attributive and the predicative positions, unlike their English counterparts many and few that cannot be used as predicates due to the token-denoting nature of English nouns and that English is not a pro-drop language. I also argue that the determiner strengths demonstrated by Q-adjectives are not related to indefinite specificity.

In this paper, we discuss two types of dimensional adjectives in Nuosu Yi (Tibeto-Burman), which we refer to as Positive adjectives (PAs) and Equative Adjectives (EAs). We show that PAs and EAs are subject to different distributions in gradation structures: EAs are only admissible in gradation structures that can be associated with measure phrases, which include differential comparatives (e.g., Ayi is 2 cm taller than Aguo.) and degree questions (e.g., How tall is Ayi?). PAs are licensed elsewhere, including comparatives that do not introduce a differential (e.g., Ayi is taller than Aguo.), the intensification construction (e.g., Ayi is very tall), the superlative construction (e.g., Ayi is the tallest), etc. Assuming that measure phrases are degree-denoting expressions, we propose that the complementary distribution of PAs and EAs in Nuosu Yi is due to their different semantics: PAs are context sensitive predicates that do not introduce a degree argument (of type ), while EAs are degree predicates (of type >).

While the domain of toponymy has great research potential, it has so far gained little attention in Iran. The present paper is a typological study on a sample group of toponyms from two different provinces of Gilan (a northern coastal province next to the Caspian Sea) and Bushehr (a southern coastal province beside the Persian Gulf) within the framework of the Australian National Placenames Survey typology proposed by Tent and Blair. The two regions in question are similar in terms of adjacency to a major water body but different in language, culture, and geography. To determine whether the Australian proposed typology is applicable to Iranian toponyms, we collected 60 coastal placenames from Gilan and Bushehr and classified them according to their Specifics and Generics based on Tent and Blair’s (2009, 2011) typology. Further, we compared placenaming motivations and processes in the two regions. The results show that although the Iranian placenames differ from the Australian ones in terms of their structure, they fit well into the typology. Water-related features are among the top motivations for local namers in both Gilan and Bushehr. Nevertheless, Bushehr namers are more motivated by natural features while those from Gilan, in most cases, are non-naturally motivated.

This paper makes remarks on the syntactic status of Gapless Relative Clauses (GRCs) in Mandarin Chinese and shows that the arguments for their complement status are not supported by the facts in Mandarin Chinese, as almost all the arguments for the complement clause analysis of GRCs, as presented in Huang (2016), could be argued to be evidence for the relative clause (RC) analysis of GRCs. The following RC recoverability hierarchy, Argument RC > Adjunct RC > GRC, is proposed to explain the contrasts discussed in Huang (2016) and this paper, and the relevant facts and differences could be accounted for if one assumes that the RCs further to the right in the hierarchy above are more difficult to be recovered than the RCs further to the left in the above hierarchy and should thus occur closer to the head noun. This paper demonstrates that GRCs are really RCs licensed by a covert semantic variable, and suggests that the gapless requirement on complement clauses be replaced by the following two conditions: (a) no syntactic gap or semantic variable exists in the relevant clause that is related to the head noun in question and (b) a semantic condition, to be specified in this paper, is necessary on the relationship between the clause in question and the modified head noun.