Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Yen-hui Audrey Li
Publisher: Oxford Studies in Comparative
ISBN: 0199945675
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 461

Get Book

Book Description
"Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective collects twelve new papers that explore the syntax of Chinese in comparison with other languages"--

Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Yen-hui Audrey Li
Publisher: Oxford Studies in Comparative
ISBN: 0199945675
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 461

Get Book

Book Description
"Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective collects twelve new papers that explore the syntax of Chinese in comparison with other languages"--

New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax

New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Waltraud Paul
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110338777
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Get Book

Book Description
Mandarin Chinese has become indispensable for crosslinguistic comparison and syntactic theorizing. It is nevertheless still difficult to obtain comprehensive answers to research questions, because Chinese is often presented as an "exotic" language defying the analytical tools standardly used for other languages. This book sets out to demystify Chinese. It places controversial issues in the context of current syntactic theories and offers precise analyses based on a large array of representative data. Although the focus is on Modern Mandarin, earlier stages of Chinese are occasionally referred to in order to highlight striking continuities in its history. VO order is one such constant factor, thus invalidating the idea that Chinese went through a major word order change from OV to VO and back to OV. Another claim often made for Chinese as an isolating language, viz. the existence of an impoverished inventory of parts of speech, is likewise refuted. Other long debated issues addressed here include the relevance of the dichotomy topic vs subject prominence and the role of Chinese as a recurring exception to crosscategorial harmonies posited in typological studies.

Grammar in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Grammar in Cross-Linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Teruhiro Ishiguro
Publisher: Linguistic Insights
ISBN: 9783039114450
Category : Chinese language
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
The papers in this volume are devoted to new in-depth treatments of distinctive aspects of Chinese and Japanese syntax, semantics and pragmatics, informed by influential theoretical concepts of the day, including cognitive grammar, construction grammar, information structure, grammaticalization and linguistic typology.

New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax

New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Waltraud Paul
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110393972
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Get Book

Book Description
Mandarin Chinese has become indispensable for crosslinguistic comparison and syntactic theorizing. It is nevertheless still difficult to obtain comprehensive answers to research questions, because Chinese is often presented as an "exotic" language defying the analytical tools standardly used for other languages. This book sets out to demystify Chinese. It places controversial issues in the context of current syntactic theories and offers precise analyses based on a large array of representative data. Although the focus is on Modern Mandarin, earlier stages of Chinese are occasionally referred to in order to highlight striking continuities in its history. VO order is one such constant factor, thus invalidating the idea that Chinese went through a major word order change from OV to VO and back to OV. Another claim often made for Chinese as an isolating language, viz. the existence of an impoverished inventory of parts of speech, is likewise refuted. Other long debated issues addressed here include the relevance of the dichotomy topic vs subject prominence and the role of Chinese as a recurring exception to crosscategorial harmonies posited in typological studies.

Grammaticalization and Language Change in Chinese

Grammaticalization and Language Change in Chinese PDF Author: Xiu-Zhi Zoe Wu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134307268
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book

Book Description
This innovative study on the phenomenon of 'grammaticalization' and its manifestation in Chinese provides new insights into language change in Chinese and a large number of grammatical topics. Grammaticalization occurs in all of the world's languages. Xiu-Zhi Zoe Wu demonstrates general linguistic principles present and active in the phenomenon of grammaticalization whilst also describing the modelling of language in formal theoretical approaches to syntax; so this book fills two major gaps in the current study of linguistics. 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. Using patters from Chinese, the author establishes cross-linguistic generalizations about language change and grammaticalization. This book should be of great interest to Chinese linguists and readers interested in language change in different languages.

Space in Languages of China

Space in Languages of China PDF Author: Dan Xu
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402083211
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book

Book Description
Space has long been a popular topic in linguistic research. Numerous books on the subject have been published over the past decade. However, none of these books were based on linguistic data from Chinese and expressions of space in Chinese have been largely neglected in past research. In this volume, not only Mandarin Chinese (the standard language) is investigated; several other dialects, as well as a minority language of China and Chinese Sign Language are studied. Cross-linguistic, synchronic and diachronic approaches are used to investigate phenomena related to space. The authors of this book present different points of view on the expression of space in language and related theoretical issues. As the contributing scholars argue, Chinese shares many common features with other languages, but also presents some particular properties. Space is a topic that is both classical and modern, of enduring interest. These studies of space give insight into not only general linguistics but also other domains such as anthropology and psychology.

Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography

Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography PDF Author: Fuzhen Si
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027259771
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
This book illustrates recent developments in cartographic studies, seen from a comparative perspective. The different chapters explore various aspects of theoretical and descriptive syntax, bearing on such topics as selection, causativity, binding, light verb constructions, the structure of the high and low peripheral zones. Syntactic issues in the study of dialects and ancient languages are also addressed. The languages investigated include French, Hebrew, Standard Dutch and the Ghent dialect, Etruscan, Japanese, English, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and the Teochew dialect. The intended readers of this book include researchers and students working on natural language syntax, the interface between syntax and semantics/pragmatics, and comparative and typological linguistics, as well as scholars interested in particular languages such as East Asian and Romance languages.

Grammatical Relations

Grammatical Relations PDF Author: Franz Müller-Gotama
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110887339
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Get Book

Book Description
The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Adverbs and Functional Heads

Adverbs and Functional Heads PDF Author: Guglielmo Cinque
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195115279
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
This text presents evidence locating adverb phrases in the specifiers of distinct functional projections within a theory of the clause. In this theory, both adverbs and heads, which encode the functional notions of the clause, are ordered in a rigid sequence. The author's proposal suggests that the structure of natural language sentences is much richer than previously assumed.

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190210680
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book

Book Description
This edited volume provides new insights into the architecture of Chinese grammar from a comparative perspective, using principles of cartography. Cartography is a research program within syntactic theory that is guided by the view that syntactic structures contain grammatical and functional information that is ideal for semantic interpretation - by studying the syntactic structures of a particular language, syntacticians can better understand the semantic issues at play in that language. The chapters in this book map out the "topography" of a variety of constructions in Chinese, specifically information structure, wh-question formation, and peripheral functional elements. The syntactic structure of Chinese makes it an ideal language for this line of research, because functional elements are often spread throughout sentences rather than clumped together as is usually dictated by language-specific morphology. Mapping Chinese syntactic structures therefore offers a window into the origin of heavily "scrambled" constructions often observed in other languages. The book includes a preface that will discusses the goal of cartography and explains how the collection contributes towards our understanding of this approach to syntax. The subsequent seven original articles all contain original syntactic data that is invaluable for future research in cartography, and the collection as a whole paints a broader picture of how the alignment between syntax and semantics works in a principled way.