Download or read book Plurality and Classifiers across Languages in China written by Dan Xu and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-19 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plural marking, numeral classifiers and reduplication constitute the main means of quantification marking in the domain of grammar. The contributions in this book focus on the typological correlation between the three different strategies for quantification, as well as on some general issues. A better understanding of the quantification strategies in the languages of China will enrich our comprehension of human language and thought. The book is expected to have an impact on the study of linguistic typology, language contact, and patterns of the evolution.

Download or read book Classifier Structures in Mandarin Chinese written by Niina Ning Zhang and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph addresses fundamental syntactic issues of classifier constructions, based on a thorough study of a typical classifier language, Mandarin Chinese. It shows that the contrast between count and mass is not binary. Instead, there are two independently attested features: Numerability, the ability of a noun to combine with a numeral directly, and Delimitability, the ability of a noun to be modified by a delimitive modifier, such as size, shape, or boundary modifier. Although all nouns in Chinese are non-count nouns, there is still a mass/non-mass contrast, with mass nouns selected by individuating classifiers and non-mass nouns selected by individual classifiers. Some languages have the counterparts of Chinese individuating classifiers only, some languages have the counterparts of Chinese individual classifiers only, and some other languages have no counterpart of either individual or individuating classifiers of Chinese. The book also reports that unit plurality can be expressed by reduplicative classifiers in the language. Moreover, for the constituency of a numeral expression, an individual, individuating, or kind classifier combines with the noun first and then the numeral is integrated; but a partitive or collective classifier, like a measure word, combines with the numeral first, before the noun is integrated into the whole nominal structure. Furthermore, the book identifies the syntactic positions of various uses of classifiers in the language. A classifier is at a functional head position that has a dependency with a numeral, or a position that has a dependency with a generic or existential quantifier, or a position that represents the singular-plural contrast, or a position that licenses a delimitive modifier when the classifier occurs in a compound.

Download or read book Plurality in Second Language Chinese written by Jiajia Su and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This thesis investigates the L2 acquisition of plural marking in Chinese by English speakers and Korean speakers within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) (Lardiere 2009). According to the FRH, acquisition difficulty arises from differences in how features are assembled in lexical items and under what conditions features are realized in the L1 and L2; acquisition difficulty can be overcome when positive evidence is available in the input, but might persist when relevant evidence is obscure or unavailable.The Chinese plural suffix -men, the Korean plural suffix -tul, and the English plural suffix -s share some properties and differ on others: (i) plural marking is optional in Chinese and Korean, but obligatory in English; (ii) plural-marked nouns have a specific interpretation in Chinese and Korean, but not in English; and (iii) plural marking is restricted to human nouns in Chinese, but not in Korean or English. In addition, there are some co-occurrence differences: (i) when a noun co-occurs with a demonstrative, plural marking is obligatory on the noun in Korean, obligatory on the demonstrative in Chinese, and obligatory on both demonstrative and noun in English; and (ii) when a noun co-occurs with a classifier (Cl), plural marking is prohibited in Chinese, and prohibited in Korean with the exception of human classifiers and human nouns. Moreover, classifiers can be reduplicated in Chinese to express plurality: yi Cl Cl reduplication has an abundant reading, and Cl Cl reduplication has a distributive reading. These cross-linguistic differences in plurality are analyzed in terms of differences in the way features are assembled and differences in conditions on feature realization.An experiment was conducted to test L2 knowledge of Chinese plural marking. 15 advanced and 17 intermediate English-speaking learners of Chinese, 16 advanced and 19 intermediate Korean-speaking learners of Chinese, and 25 native Chinese speakers were tested using a Grammaticality Judgment Task and a Truth Value Judgment Task. The results show that: (i) all the L2 groups have acquired the [Number+plural, D+specific, Animacy+human] features associated with the Chinese plural suffix -men; (ii) the two English groups and the advanced Korean group have acquired the co-occurrence condition with demonstratives and the co-occurrence condition with classifiers; (iii) only the two advanced groups have acquired the [Number+plural] feature of yi Cl Cl reduplication, none of the L2 groups have acquired the [Q+abundant] feature of yi Cl Cl reduplication; and (iv) all the L2 groups have acquired the [Number+plural, Q+distributive] features of Cl Cl reduplication. The results are consistent with the FRH: (i) differences in how features are assembled in lexical items and differences in conditions on feature realization between the L1 and L2 can lead to acquisition difficulty; and (ii) acquisition difficulty resulting from L1 transfer can be overcome, but successful acquisition is not guaranteed. As for the process of feature reassembly, the study suggests that feature reassembly can be triggered by positive evidence, direct negative evidence such as grammar teaching, and generalized indirect negative evidence based on the statistical distribution of input"--

Download or read book Numeral Classifiers in Chinese written by XuPing Li and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the syntax and semantics of numeral classifiers in Mandarin and other Chinese languages. It explores how Chinese classifiers are semantically interpreted in syntactic contexts and how semantic functions of classifiers are realized at the syntactic level. The book is a contribution to formal Chinese linguistics, and to the understanding of grammatical properties of nominal phrases in Chinese and East Asian languages.

Download or read book Space and Quantification in Languages of China written by Dan Xu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-24 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides general linguists with new data and analysis on languages spoken in China regarding various aspects of space and quantification, using different approaches. Contributions by researchers from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, the United States and Australia offer insights on aspects of language ranging from phonology and morphology to syntax and semantics, while the approaches vary from formal, historical, areal, typological, and cognitive linguistics to second language acquisition. After separate volumes on space and quantification in languages of China, the studies in this volume combine space and quantification to allow readers a view of the intersection of the two topics. Each article contributes to general linguistic knowledge while discussing a particular aspect of space or quantification in a particular language/dialect, offering new data and analysis from languages that are spoken in the same geographical area, and that belong to various language families that exist and evolve in close contact with one another.

Download or read book The lexeme in descriptive and theoretical morphology written by Olivier Bonami and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After being dominant during about a century since its invention by Baudouin de Courtenay at the end of the nineteenth century, morpheme is more and more replaced by lexeme in contemporary descriptive and theoretical morphology. The notion of a lexeme is usually associated with the work of P. H. Matthews (1972, 1974), who characterizes it as a lexical entity abstracting over individual inflected words. Over the last three decades, the lexeme has become a cornerstone of much work in both inflectional morphology and word formation (or, as it is increasingly been called, lexeme formation). The papers in the present volume take stock of the descriptive and theoretical usefulness of the lexeme, but also adress many of the challenges met by classical lexeme-based theories of morphology.

Download or read book The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia written by Paul Sidwell and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 1261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The handbook will offer a survey of the field of linguistics in the early 21st century for the Southeast Asian Linguistic Area. The last half century has seen a great increase in work on language contact, work in genetic, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics, and since the 1990s especially documentation of endangered languages. The book will provide an account of work in these areas, focusing on the achievements of SEAsian linguistics, as well as the challenges and unresolved issues, and provide a survey of the relevant major publications and other available resources. We will address: Survey of the languages of the area, organized along genetic lines, with discussion of relevant political and cultural background issues Theoretical/descriptive and typological issues Genetic classification and historical linguistics Areal and contact linguistics Other areas of interest such as sociolinguistics, semantics, writing systems, etc. Resources (major monographs and monograph series, dictionaries, journals, electronic data bases, etc.) Grammar sketches of languages representative of the genetic and structural diversity of the region.

Download or read book The Diachrony of Classification Systems written by William B. McGregor and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-05-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classification is a popular topic in typological, descriptive and theoretical linguistics. This volume is the first to deal specifically with the diachrony of linguistic systems of classification. It comprises original papers that examine the ways in which linguistic classification systems arise, change, and dissipate in both natural circumstances and in circumstances of attrition. The role of diffusion in such processes is explored, as well as the question of what can be diffused. The volume is not restricted to nominal systems of classification, but also includes papers dealing with the less well-known phenomenon of verbal classification. Languages from a wide spread of world regions are examined, including Africa, Amazonia, Australia, Eurasia, Oceania, and Mesoamerica. The volume will be of interest to linguistic typologists, descriptive linguists, historical linguists, and grammaticalization theorists.

Download or read book Genders and Classifiers written by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and published by Explorations in Linguistic Typ. This book was released on 2019-08-03 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a comprehensive account of the typology of noun classification across the world's languages. Every language has some means of categorizing objects into humans, or animates, or by their shape, form, size, and function. The most widespread are linguistic genders - grammatical classes of nouns based on core semantic properties such as sex (female and male), animacy, humanness, and also shape and size. Classifiers of several types also serve to categorize entities. Numeral classifiers occur with number words, possessive classifiers appear in the expressions of possession, and verbal classifiers are used on a verb, categorizing its argument. These varied sorts of genders and classifiers can also occur together. This volume elaborates on the expression, usage, history, and meanings of noun categorization devices, exploring their various facets across the languages of South America and Asia, which are known for the diversity of their noun categorization. The volume begins with a typological introduction that outlines the types of noun categorization devices and their expression, scope, functions, and development, as well as sociocultural aspects of their use. The following nine chapters provide in-depth studies of genders and classifiers of different types in a range of South American and Asian languages and language families, including Arawak languages, Zamucoan, Hmong, and Japanese.

Download or read book Chinese Linguistics written by Giorgio Francesco Arcodia and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-03 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a directory of WWW resources on Chinese linguistics, compiled by the East Asian Libraries Cooperative. Links to resources on phonetics, grammar, and dialects. Provides access to online courses, journals, and academic organizations.

Download or read book Chinese Syntax in a Cross linguistic Perspective written by Yen-hui Audrey Li and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective collects twelve new papers that explore the syntax of Chinese in comparison with other languages.

Download or read book Numeral Classifiers and Classifier Languages written by Chungmin Lee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing mainly on classifiers, Numeral Classifiers and Classifier Languages offers a deep investigation of three major classifier languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This book provides detailed discussions well supported by empirical evidence and corpus analyses. Theoretical hypotheses regarding differences and commonalities between numeral classifier languages and other mainly article languages are tested to seek universals or typological characteristics. The essays collected here from leading scholars in different fields promise to be greatly significant in the field of linguistics for several reasons. First, it targets three representative classifier languages in Asia. It also provides critical clues and suggests solutions to syntactic, semantic, psychological, and philosophical issues about classifier constructions. Finally, it addresses ensuing debates that may arise in the field of linguistics in general and neighboring inter-disciplinary areas. This book should be of great interest to advanced students and scholars of East Asian languages.

Download or read book The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language written by Sin-Wai Chan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 1085 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language is an invaluable resource for language learners and linguists of Chinese worldwide, those interested readers of Chinese literature and cultures, and scholars in Chinese studies. Featuring the research on the changing landscape of the Chinese language by a number of eminent academics in the field, this volume will meet the academic, linguistic and pedagogical needs of anyone interested in the Chinese language: from Sinologists to Chinese linguists, as well as teachers and learners of Chinese as a second language. The encyclopedia explores a range of topics: from research on oracle bone and bronze inscriptions, to Chinese language acquisition, to the language of the mass media. This reference offers a guide to shifts over time in thinking about the Chinese language as well as providing an overview of contemporary themes, debates and research interests. The editors and contributors are assisted by an editorial board comprised of the best and most experienced sinologists world-wide. The reference includes an introduction, written by the editor, which places the assembled texts in their historical and intellectual context. The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital research resource.

Download or read book A Reference Grammar of Caijia written by Shanshan Lü and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-10-24 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caijia, [meŋ21ni33ŋoŋ33] ‘Caijia speech’, is an endangered language in the Sino-Tibetan family with less than 1000 speakers in Hezhang and Weining counties in northwest in Guizhou Province in Southwest China. Its sub-classification remains unclear. It was almost four decades ago when the Caijia language was officially reported for the first time in 1982 by the Language Team of Bureau of Ethnic Identification in Bijie, yet this language has nevertheless remained neither well-described nor studied. This book, a linguistic description of the Xingfa variety of Caijia based on the fieldwork data in Xingfa township of Hezhang county, is the first reference grammar of the Caijia language, covering its sound system, word formation, parts of speech and syntactic structures in fifteen chapters. Being analytic, Caijia presents many common grammatical features attested in East and Southeast Asian languages, for example, compounds, quadrisyllabic idiomatic expressions or elaborate expressions, lack of inflection, a classifier system, a strong relationship between nominalization and relativization, pro-drop and grammaticalization of verbs. Moreover, Caijia shares more similarities with Sinitic languages. Apart from these common areal features, this book will also reveal some special features of Caijia.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Word Classes written by Eva van Lier and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-30 with total page 1137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook explores multiple facets of the study of word classes, also known as parts of speech or lexical categories. These categories are of fundamental importance to linguistic theory and description, both formal and functional, and for both language-internal analyses and cross-linguistic comparison. The volume consists of five parts that investigate word classes from different angles. Chapters in the first part address a range of fundamental issues including diversity and unity in word classes around the world, categorization at different levels of structure, the distinction between lexical and functional words, and hybrid categories. Part II examines the treatment of word classes across a wide range of contemporary linguistic theories, such as Cognitive Grammar, Minimalist Syntax, and Lexical Functional Grammar, while the focus of Part III is on individual word classes, from major categories such as verb and noun to minor ones such as adpositions and ideophones. Part IV provides a number of cross-linguistic case studies, exploring word classes in families including Afroasiatic, Sinitic, Mayan, Austronesian, and in sign languages. Chapters in the final part of the book discuss word classes from the perspective of various sub-disciplines of linguistics, ranging from first and second language acquisition to computational and corpus linguistics. Together, the contributions showcase the importance of word classes for the whole discipline of linguistics, while also highlighting the many ongoing debates in the areas and outlining fruitful avenues for future research.

Download or read book A Grammar of Shaowu written by Sing Sing Ngai and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 733 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive grammar of Shaowu, a Min language spoken in Shaowu city and its environs in northwestern Fujian province, China. The book offers first-hand linguistic data collected over four years in the field, now placed at the disposal of researchers and students working in language documentation, comparative linguistics and Sinitic typology. It can serve as a reference grammar for those interested in learning the Shaowu language, thereby helping to preserve it. In addition, the book provides insights into Shaowu's classification which has been widely debated, thus elucidating its genetic affiliation. The book first presents Shaowu's geography, demography and history. It then profiles the language's phonology and lexicon, before providing a detailed description of its syntax, notably on its nominal, predicate, clausal and complex sentence structures, which are the focus of the book. The typological profile of Shaowu is also treated with the conclusion that the language has Gan, Hakka, Mandarin and even some Wu overlays on its Min base. The Shaowu language serves an excellent example to illustrate the degree of hybridity a language can attain due to intensive language contact over time.

Download or read book Prosodic Morphology in Mandarin Chinese written by Shengli Feng and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is not entirely clear if modern Chinese is a monosyllabic or disyllabic language. Although a disyllabic prosodic unit of some sort has long been considered by many to be at play in Chinese grammar, the intuition is not always rigidly fleshed out theoretically in the area of Chinese morphology. In this book, Shengli Feng applies the theoretical model of prosodic morphology to Chinese morphology to provide the theoretical clarity regarding how and why Mandarin Chinese words are structured in a particular way. All of the facts generated by the system of prosodic morphology in Chinese provide new perspectives for linguistic theory, as well as insights for teaching Chinese and studying of Chinese poetic prosody.