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- Volume 5, Issue 1, 2024
Asian Languages and Linguistics - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2024
Volume 5, Issue 1, 2024
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Ingredients of excess
Author(s): Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine and Anne Nguyenpp.: 1–33 (33)More LessAbstractWe describe the various uses of the Vietnamese morpheme quá which appears in excessive constructions. Unlike most other degree morphemes in Vietnamese, quá can precede or follow its gradable predicate, and we argue that these two different uses convey excess in very different ways: pre-predicate quá encodes purpose-oriented excessive truth conditions, whereas post-predicate quá is a comparative which projects a not-at-issue malefactive inference. We propose that the two constructions trace back to pre- and post-predicate 過kua` in Middle Chinese, motivated by comparisons with cognate constructions in contemporary Chinese languages. We also describe two other uses of quá, as an intensifier with speaker commitment and as an exclamative marker, and explain how they developed from the excessives. This study thus offers an explanatory account of the various uses of this multifunctional expression and the relationships between them, grounded in the history of the language and in principles of semantic change.
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Exploring absolutive case in reversible sentence structures of Mandarin Chinese1, 2
Author(s): Lixin Jinpp.: 34–71 (38)More LessAbstractThis paper examines the absolutive case in Modern Mandarin Chinese sentences with reversible argument structures. In these sentences, the two arguments adjacent to the verb can be interchangeable in syntactic position. Although previous research has provided partial descriptions and analyses of this grammatical phenomenon, there is still no comprehensive and systematic exploration of these reversible sentences. Employing a reductionist methodology, the study meticulously examines the interaction modes between the verb and its arguments in eight types of reversible sentence structures involving the addition or omission of argument roles. This analysis reveals a distinct pattern that highlights the centrality of an ‘absolute argument’ within these sentences. Building on these observations, the paper articulates the fundamental structural patterns of reversible sentences and concludes a unified explanatory framework. This research enriches our understanding of Mandarin Chinese syntax and offers valuable perspectives on the linguistic dynamics underlying reversible sentence construction.
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A descriptive study of conditional constructions in Odia
Author(s): Kalyanamalini Sahoo and Sanjaya Kumar Lenkapp.: 72–90 (19)More LessAbstractThis study investigates the types of conditional constructions found in the Indo-Aryan language Odia and studies the morpho-syntactic structure and linear function of it. In Odia, Conditional constructions consist of a main clause (adoposis), and a subordinate clause (protasis). It is usually protasis, which functions as antecedent, and adoposis functions as consequent, forming a single sentence, in which consequent is referentially linked to its antecedent by anaphoric relation. Odia Conditional clause is marked in one of the various morpho-syntactic ways: lexically by 4 conjunctive morphemes like, jad̪i ‘if’/ ‘whether’, manekara ‘supposing’, natʃet̪ ‘otherwise’, kāɭe ‘in case’ or grammatically by a bound morpheme ‑ile added with the verbal form as suffix, in the protasis, or by a je…se correlative phrase ‘as long as’. This paper tries to formalize such relation of conditional clauses and finds that a single conditional operator can map with different conditional scopes for denoting different types of conditional meanings.
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Corpus-based variationist linguistics
Author(s): Hülya Ünsal Şakiroğlupp.: 91–103 (13)More LessAbstractThis paper aims to identify what archaic words/word groups were still known and used both among language speakers and Turkish National Corpus (TNC) as an indication of lexical change in Turkish from 1900 to 2020. The present study explores the diachronic variation of lexical change in Turkish by combining the corpus-based variationist sociolinguistic approach with the perspective of historical sociolinguistics. The words/collocations thought to be outdated from the original version of “Eylül” novel, written in 1900, were selected and randomly subsampled using a computer-based randomization algorithm. A survey was formed using the outdated words/collocations along with the context. The results indicated that demographical variables did not affect word knowledge and that the archaic words were unfamiliar to all participants uniformly. The overall comparison of words/collocations tested in TNC and survey indicated similar results as the most and the least frequently used words were also the most and least abundantly present in TNC.
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Modern Uyghur evidentials in interrogative sentences
Author(s): Abdurishid Yakuppp.: 104–131 (28)More LessAbstractModern Uyghur has five terms for evidentiality in declarative sentences: direct, inferred-perceptive, inferential-assumptive, reportative, and quotative. The direct evidential is primarily expressed through markers of viewpoint aspect, while the remaining four terms are expressed through evidential markers and a combination of evidential markers with evidential strategies. Although most evidentials occur in interrogative sentences, not all of them do. In contrast to declarative sentences, certain evidentials are not utilized to convey evidentiality in interrogative sentences. Some of these evidentials are not present in questions when they are employed to describe the speaker’s actions, emotions, and physical condition.
In interrogative sentences in Modern Uyghur, the source of information can be either the addressee or someone else. The speaker may provide information obtained through personal observation or from a third party, seeking the addressee’s expertise. Some evidential markers serve only to confirm information, and some questions may simply be a polite repetition of the addressee’s information.
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Evidence of a contact-induced change
Author(s): Muhammad Zakariapp.: 132–177 (46)More LessAbstractSouth Central Tibeto-Burman (also known as Kuki-Chin) forms a group of fifty languages spoken in the border area of Bangladesh, India and Burma. Due to their geographic distribution, speakers of South Central (SC) languages are in close contact with the superstrate languages, Bangla, Hindi and Burmese. The inevitable consequence of this longstanding contact on lesser-known languages of this region is understudied, especially structural diffusions. This paper presents a detailed discussion on relative-correlative (RC-CRC) construction in Hyow, a Southeastern SC language spoken by approximately four thousand people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, where they are in close contact with Bangla and Marma (a dialect of Burmese). This empirical study demonstrates how RC-CRC construction in Hyow is structurally and distributionally similar to those in IA languages, taking a critical look at the existing literature on IA languages and using data therein for a comparative study. In doing so, this paper provides examples from Bangla, Hindi and Sanskrit, and refutes some of the observations made in previous scholarly works. This paper also explores how they might have developed in Hyow, which otherwise uses a nominalization as native strategy for forming relative clauses. Even though most part of this paper discusses the RC-CRC constructions in Hyow as a consequence of language contact, this paper presents new insights on RC-CRC constructions in Bangla as well comparing to other IA languages.
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Review of You (2020): Prosodic Phonology of the Fuzhou Dialect: Domains and Rule Application
Author(s): Jianjun Zhao and Naozang Baopp.: 178–185 (8)More LessThis article reviews Prosodic Phonology of the Fuzhou Dialect: Domains and Rule Application
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