New Horizons in Chinese Linguistics
New Horizons in Chinese Linguistics

Author: C-T James Huang

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9400916086

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The past decade and a half has witnessed a great deal of renewed interest in the study of Chinese linguistics, not only in the traditional areas of philological studies and in theoretically oriented areas of syn chronic grammar and language change but also in the cultivation of new frontiers in related areas of the cognitive sciences. There is a significant increase in the number of students studying one area or another of the linguistic structure of Chinese in various linguistic programs in the United States, Europe, Australia and in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. Several new academic departments devoted to the study of linguistics have been established in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the past few years. The increasing research and study activities have also resulted in a number of national and international conferences, including the North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL), which has been held annually in the United States; the International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL), which has had its fourth meeting since it was launched by Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 1990; the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (lACL), created in Singapore in 1992 and now incorporated in Irvine, California, which has held its annual meetings at major institutions in Asia, Europe, and the US.

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax
The Cartography of Chinese Syntax

Author: Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-08-12

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0190463791

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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.

Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese
Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese

Author: Victor Junnan Pan

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-06-20

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 3110489759

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The use of resumptive pronouns is quite productive in Mandarin Chinese; however, their distribution has rarely been studied in a systematic way. This book not only gives a thorough description of the general distribution of resumptive pronouns in different contexts but also offers a theoretical account in the framework of the Minimalist Program. Different types of A'-dependencies, mediated by gaps and by resumptive pronouns, are derived by different minimalist mechanisms, such as Agree, Match and Move. These mechanisms only apply at Narrow Syntax and do not uniformly obey locality constraints. Importantly, interpretative properties of an A'-bound element, such as reconstruction effects, is only related to its internal structure irrespective of how the A'-chain concerned is derived. From this perspective, resumptivity is an exclusively syntactic-related phenomenon and is thus not subject to any interface condition. Adopting a comparative approach, this study improves the general understanding of resumptivity crosslinguistically.

The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics
The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

Author: C. T. James Huang

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2018-03-20

Total Pages: 694

ISBN-13: 1119457076

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The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics is the first comprehensive introduction to Chinese linguistics from the perspective of modern theoretical and formal linguistics. Containing twenty-five chapters, the book offers a balanced, accessible and thoughtfully organized introduction to some of the most important results of research into Chinese linguistics carried out by theoretical linguists during the last thirty years. Presenting critical overviews of a wide range of major topics, it is the first to meet the great demand for an overview volume on core areas of Chinese linguistics. Authoritative contributions describe and assess the major achievements and controversies of research undertaken in each area, and provide bibliographies for further reading. The contributors refer both to their own work in relevant fields, and objectively present a range of competitor theories and analyses, resulting in a volume that is fully comprehensive in its coverage of theoretical research into Chinese linguistics in recent years. This unique Handbook is suitable both as a primary reader for structured, taught courses on Chinese linguistics at university level, and for individual study by graduates and other professional linguists.

New Explorations in Chinese Theoretical Syntax
New Explorations in Chinese Theoretical Syntax

Author: Andrew Simpson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2022-04-15

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 9027258171

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This volume brings together 19 cutting edge studies written by some of the most prominent linguists working on Chinese formal syntax, as a Festschrift volume dedicated to Yen-Hui Audrey Li. The contributions to the volume address a wide range of issues currently developing in the field of Chinese syntax, grouped into five thematic sections on the structure of lexical and functional projections, modal verb syntax, syntax-semantics interactions, the syntax and interpretation of particles, and the acquisition of syntactic structures. With its rich descriptive content sourced from different varieties of Chinese, and its theoretical orientation and analyses, the book provides an important new resource both for researchers with a primary interest in Chinese and other linguists interested in discovering how properties of Chinese can inform the analysis of other languages.

Acquisition of Word Order in Chinese as a Foreign Language
Acquisition of Word Order in Chinese as a Foreign Language

Author: Wenying Jiang

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009-09-04

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 3110216191

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Research in the field of Chinese as a second/foreign language (L2) acquisition, at present, does not match the increasing demand to learn Chinese as an L2, given that Chinese is the fastest growing foreign language in countries such as Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada, UK and Australia. Particularly, research in Chinese L2 word order acquisition requires more attention because word order plays a more complex role in Chinese than in English due to the fact that Chinese relies heavily on word order for information structuring. Experience with Chinese L2 learning and teaching shows that Chinese word order errors are a significant problem with adult English-speaking learners. However, Chinese L2 researchers and teachers are left with no means to adequately describe and explain these errors for instruction purposes. This book is specifically written to provide such a means for them to understand Chinese word order, to describe and explain Chinese word order errors and also to help treat such errors in L2 classrooms. The centrality of word order in Chinese grammar and the emerging popularity of learning Chinese L2 make this book an important resource for both the learner and the teacher.

Current Issues in Chinese Linguistics
Current Issues in Chinese Linguistics

Author: Hooi Ling Soh

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-07-12

Total Pages: 615

ISBN-13: 1443832480

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Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world and one of the very few contemporary languages whose history is documented in an unbroken tradition extending back to the second millennium. Compared with Western languages, Chinese has a typology with distinguished features in sound system, syntax, and discourse that have a strong impact on Chinese linguistics studies and language learning. Drawing on theoretical models from formal and functional linguistics, discourse analysis, computer-assisted corpus studies, language socialization, and second language acquisition, this volume presents new advances and addresses a broad range of current issues in the study of Chinese linguistics with research studies that originated from the proceedings of the 21st North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-21). As globalization presses on, more and more people are interested in Chinese – its history, structure, research, and new developments. This volume aims to be instrumental. Written in a coherent and structured style, each section is concentrated on a particular linguistic area, and each chapter is self-contained with a clear focus and theoretical framework. It will be valuable to linguists, educators, administrators, specialists, teachers and students of Chinese as a native, second, heritage, or foreign language.

New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax
New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax

Author: Waltraud Paul

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-12-12

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 3110393972

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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.

Perspectives on Prepositions
Perspectives on Prepositions

Author: Hubert Cuyckens

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-07-31

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 3110924781

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In the past two decades, the study of prepositions has grown steadily. The papers collected in this volume bring together the multifaceted perspectives on prepositions that have been developed in contemporary linguistics. Some papers mainly discuss syntactic (and morphological) aspects of prepositions; other papers predominantly focus on cognitive aspects. All the papers are, however, concerned with the semantics of prepositions. This volume evolved from a workshop on prepositions held at Hamburg University on June 26 and 27, 1998.

Mapping the Left Periphery
Mapping the Left Periphery

Author: Paola Beninca

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-02-16

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 0199842310

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Mapping the Left Periphery, the fifth volume in "The Cartography of Syntactic Structures," is entirely devoted to the functional articulation of the so-called complementizer system, the highest part of sentence structure. The papers collected here identify, on the basis of substantial empirical evidence, new atoms of functional structure, which encode specific features that are typically expressed in the left periphery. The volume also submits the richly articulated CP structure to further crosslinguistic checking. The research presented here has led to the identification of new, important restrictions in the relative sequence of elements appearing in the left periphery. With contributions from African languages, Chinese, Hungarian, Romance languages, and Italian dialects, Mapping the Left Periphery will be of interest to syntacticians working on comparative syntax, and more specifically on Romance grammar.