Download or read book The Diachronic Development of Passive Constructions from Archaic Chinese to Modern Mandarin written by Yin Li and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I study the diachronic development of passive construction from Archaic Chinese to Modern Mandarin. I classify the passive forms into two major groups: 1) the monoclausal passive. 2) the biclausal passive. I propose that the monoclausal passive is similar to English-type passive constructions in that they involve a defective passive light verb. This type of passive can be traced back to the JIAN passive in Archaic Chinese. The Middle Chinese agentless BEI passive and Modern Mandarin short passive have the same structure as the JIAN passive. These three constructions can be viewed as three manifestations of a same recurring pattern. The biclausal passive developed from the Archaic Chinese WEI construction, which I analyze as a copula construction. The WEI construction was later reanalyzed as the WEI...SUO passive in Middle Chinese. I propose that the WEI...SUO passive has the same structure as the Modern Mandarin long passive. I propose that the dichotomy of Mandarin Chinese passive constructions can be naturally traced back to their Archaic Chinese sources. Their distinct sources and diachronic developments endowed them with different syntactic properties. They developed independently along two distinct lines. These two distinct lines of development, however, are shown to be governed by the same principles in Minimalist Syntax.

Download or read book Introduction to Classical Chinese written by Kai Vogelsang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-25 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook provides a comprehensive scholarly introduction to Classical Chinese and its texts. Classical Chinese is the language of Confucius and Mencius and their contemporaries, who wrote the seminal texts of Chinese philosophy more than 2,000 years ago. Although it was used as a living language for only a relatively short time, it was the foundation of Chinese education throughout the Imperial age, and formed the basis of a literary tradition that continues to the present day. This book offers students all the necessary tools to read, understand, and analyse Classical Chinese texts, including: step-by-step clearly illustrated descriptions of syntactic features; core vocabulary lists; introductions to relevant historical and cultural topics; selected readings from classical literature with original commentaries and in-depth explanations; introductions to dictionaries and other reference works on the study of ancient China; and a guide to philological methods used in the critical analysis of Classical Chinese texts. The extensive glossary provides phonological reconstructions, word classes, English translations, and citations to illustrate usage, while the up-to-date bibliography serves as a valuable starting point for further research.

Download or read book A Diachronic Study of the passive Construction in the Chinese Language written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Modality in English and Chinese written by Renzhi Li and published by Dissertation.com. This book was released on 2004 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modality is a grammatical, or semantic-grammatical, category. It is an important component of human languages. This is at least the case in most European languages. To what extent is it a near-universal? This thesis is to contribute to the question. It focuses on modal verbs in English and Chinese, two genetically and geographically unrelated languages, and analyzes what these two languages have in common and how they differ in their systems of modality. To achieve the aim, the thesis adopts the theoretical framework proposed by van der Auwera (1996, 1998 with Plungian, 2001) for the typological study of modality. Its language-specific descriptions involve the morphosyntactic features, notional functions, modal logic, and diachronic development. With these descriptions, it constructs a cross-linguistic database in a uniform, parallel structure. Then on the basis of this database, it deals with the cross-linguistic issues about modality in English and Chinese. Like many of the studies in this area, this research makes use of the well-sampled data in the relevant literature, thereby assuring the same degree of representativeness. When the data do not meet this need, it resorts to computer-based corpora. In the diachronic study of Chinese modality, quantitative analysis is adopted in proposing a development path for the senses of a modal. English translation is given particular attention in the description of Chinese modality and cross-linguistic analyses. It is found in this study that the modal systems in English and Chinese are very different things in their hyperonyms, distinctive properties, and syntactic behavior in the assertive, the non-assertive, and the passive. However, the concepts remain useful with respect to semantic functions, pragmatic uses, temporal reference, voice neutrality, and the expression of the meanings concerned with factuality, subjectivity and performativity. In terms of the theory of possible worlds, logical representations, and logical relations, modality can be viewed as a fuzzy set of the semantic domains that involve possibility and necessity. Suppletion and misplacement have nothing to do with the grammatical placement of the negator. Van der Auwera & Plungian's (1998: 98) semantic map is good, but the present study shows that it needs some refinements in the stages of premodal sources, modal developments, and postmodal uses. The harmonic combination of monosyllabic Chinese modals and the lexicalization of the negative modals deserve a position in the map, too. The grammaticalization and degrammaticalization of modality seems to involve a restricted group of notions. This study also shows that when one does cross-linguistic work on grammar, the basis is a semantic map. The rather special types of double, and triple, negation in Chinese are phenomena that previous typological work on modals had not given attention to. One can only know one's own language only if one compares it with other languages. The present study is conducive to a better understanding of English and Chinese. It contributes not only to the investigation of language universals, but also to the study of human cognition and other linguistic or applied linguistic issues.

Download or read book A Phonological History of Chinese written by Zhongwei Shen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-04 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A one-stop, comprehensive account of the key developments in the phonological history of Chinese.

Download or read book Patient Subject Constructions in Mandarin Chinese written by Xiaoling He and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a distinctive syntactic structure in Mandarin Chinese, the Patient-Subject Construction (PSC) is one of the most interesting but least well-understood structures in the language. This book offers a comprehensive account of the history, structure, meaning and use of the PSC. Unlike previous descriptions which were framed in terms of pre-existing grammatical notions such as ‘topicalization’, ‘passivization’ and ‘ergativization’, this book offers a fresh look at the PSC, in which its syntactic and semantic as well as its discourse functions are examined within the system of major construction-types of the language as a whole. The PSC, being low in transitivity, serves primarily the function of backgrounding in discourse. Typologically, the PSC bears a resemblance to middle constructions in Indo-European and other languages, raising interesting questions about ways to understand congruent and divergent syntactic structures across the world’s languages. This book will be of interest to students of Chinese Linguistics as well as Language Typology.

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Chinese Language Studies written by Zhengdao Ye and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-30 with total page 1032 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new major reference work provides a comprehensive overview of linguistic phenomena in a variety of Sinitic languages in a global context, highlighting the dynamic interaction between these languages and English. This “living reference work” offers a window into the linguistic sphere in China and beyond, and showcases the latest research into diverse and evolving linguistic phenomena that have resulted from intensified interactions between the Sinophone world and other lingua-spheres. The Handbook is divided into five sections. The chapters in Section I (New Research Trends in Chinese Linguistic Research) present fast-growing research areas in Chinese linguistics, particularly those undertaken by scholars based in China. Section II (Interactions of Sinitic Languages) focuses on language-contact situations inside and outside China. The chapters in Section III (Meaning, Culture, Translation) explore the meanings of key cultural concepts, and how ideas move between Chinese and English through translation across various genres. Section IV (New Trends in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) covers new ideas and practices relating to teaching the Chinese language and culture. The final section, Section V (Transference from Chinese to English), explores dynamic interactions between varieties of Chinese and varieties of English, as they play out in multilingual sites and settings

Download or read book The Roots of Old Chinese written by Laurent Sagart and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1999-09-15 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phonology, morphology and lexicon of late Zhou Chinese are examined in this volume. It is argued that a proper understanding of Old Chinese morphology is essential in correctly reconstructing the phonology. Based on evidence from word-families, modern dialects and related words in neighboring languages, Old Chinese words are claimed to consist of a monosyllabic root, to which a variety of derivational affixes attached. This made Old Chinese typologically more like modern languages such as Khmer, Gyarong or Atayal, than like Middle and modern Chinese, where only faint traces of the old morphology remain. In the first part of the book, the author proposes improvements to Baxter's system of reconstruction, regarding complex initials and rhymes, and then reviews in great detail the Old Chinese affixal morphology. New proposals on phonology and morphology are integrated into a coherent reconstruction system. The second part of the book consists of etymological studies of important lexical items in Old Chinese. The author demonstrates in particular the role of proportional analogy in the formation of the system of personal pronouns. Special attention is paid to contact phenomena between Chinese and neighboring languages, and — unlike most literature on Sino-Tibetan — the author identifies numerous Chinese loanwords into Tibeto-Burman. The book, which contains a lengthy list of reconstructions, an index of characters and a general index, is intended for linguists and cultural historians, as well as advanced students.

Download or read book The Evolution of Chinese Grammar written by Yuzhi Shi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chinese language has the longest well-documented history among all human languages, making it an invaluable resource for studying how languages develop and change through time. Based on a twenty-year long research project, this pioneering book is the English version of an award-winning study originally published in Chinese. It provides an evolutionary perspective on the history of Chinese grammar, tracing its development from its thirteenth-Century BC origins to the present day. It investigates all the major changes in the history of the language within contemporary linguistic frameworks, and illustrates these with a wide range of examples taken from every stage in the language's development, showing how the author's findings are relevant to contemporary descriptive, theoretical, and historical linguistics. Shedding light on the essential properties of Chinese and, ultimately, language in general, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students of Asian linguistics, historical linguistics and syntactic theory.

Download or read book The Evolution of the Chinese Language as Exemplifying the Origin and Growth of Human Speech written by Joseph Edkins and published by Nielsen Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Download or read book Diversity in Sinitic Languages written by Hilary Chappell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents new research into the great structural diversity found in Sinitic languages. While many studies focus principally on Standard Mandarin, this work draws on extensive empirical data from lesser-known languages, and seeks to dispel many recurrent linguistic myths about the Sinitic language family. Part I presents findings that show the important interplay of research into diachronic linguistics and typology in China, beginning with a discussion of how to tackle the issue of linguistic diversity in Sinitic languages. Chapters in Part II examine the Sinitic languages from a crosslinguistic perspective with pan-Sinitic explorations of demonstrative paradigms; bare classifier phrases in relation to the coding of definiteness; and of the diachronic development of two main structures for comparatives of inequality with respect to issues in language contact. Part III is devoted to individual studies of linguistic micro-areas in China: Pinghua and the Guangxi Autonomous Region in the far South of China; Shaowu Min in the northwestern corner of Fujian province; the Wu dialect of Fuyang; and the Hui'an Southern Min dialect in the South of Fujian province.

Download or read book Grammaticalization and Language Change in Chinese written by Xiu-Zhi Zoe Wu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grammaticalization and Language Change in Chinese illuminates how studies of language development and change provide special insights into the understanding of current, synchronic systems of language.

Download or read book A Reference Grammar of Chinese written by Chu-Ren Huang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Reference Grammar of Chinese is a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the linguistic structure of Chinese, covering all of the important linguistic features of the language and incorporating insights gained from research in Chinese linguistics over the past thirty years. With contributions from twenty-two leading Chinese linguists, this authoritative guide uses large-scale corpora to provide authentic examples based on actual language use. The accompanying online example databases ensure that a wide range of exemplars are readily available and also allow for new usages to be updated. This design offers a new paradigm for a reference grammar where generalizations can be cross-checked with additional examples and also provide resources for both linguistic studies and language learning. Featuring bilingual term lists, this reference grammar helps readers to access relevant literature in both English and Chinese and is an invaluable reference for learners, teachers and researchers in Chinese linguistics and language processing.

Download or read book Diachronic Construction Grammar written by Jóhanna Barðdal and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Construction Grammar as a framework offers a new perspective on traditional historical questions in diachronic linguistics and language change: how do new constructions arise, how should competition in diachronic variation be accounted for, how do constructions fall into disuse, and how do constructions change in general, formally and/or semantically, and with what implications for the language system as a whole? This volume offers a broad introduction to the confluence of Construction Grammar and historical syntax, and also detailed case studies of various instances of syntactic change modeled within Construction Grammar. The volume demonstrates that Construction Grammar as a theory is particularly well suited for modeling historical changes in morphosyntax, and it also documents challenging new phenomena that require a theoretical account within any competing framework of syntactic change.

Download or read book Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia written by Walter Bisang and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume intends to fill the gap in the grammaticalization studies setting as its goal the systematic description of grammaticalization processes in genealogically and structurally diverse languages. To address the problem of the limitations of the secondary sources for grammaticalization studies, the editors rely on sketches of grammaticalization phenomena from experts in individual languages guided by a typological questionnaire.

Download or read book Information Structure in Chinese written by 武果 and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zheng wen wei ying wen

Download or read book Passivization and Typology written by Werner Abraham and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the passive a unified universal phenomenon? The claim derived from this volume is that the passive, if not universal, has become unified according to function. Language as a means of communication needs the passive, or passive-like constructions, and sooner or later develops them based on other voices (impersonal active, middle, reflexive), specific semantic meanings such as adversativity, or tense-aspect categories (stative, perfect, preterit). Certain contributors review the passives in various languages and language groups, including languages rarely discussed. Another group of contributors takes a novel theoretical approach toward passivization within a broad typological perspective. Among the languages discussed are Vedic, Irish, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Lithuanian, Mordvin, and Nganasan, next to almost all European languages. Various theoretical frameworks such as Optimality Theory, modern structuralist approaches, Role and Reference Grammar, cognitive semantics, Distributed Morphology, and case grammar have been applied by the different authors.