Chinese Sentence-Initial Indefinites: What Corpora Reveal

The DEFINITENESS EFFECT stands for the infelicity of definite NPs occurring in existential sentences, as illustrated in example (1) from English and (2) from Mandarin. (1) There is a/#the book on the table. (2) 有 一本/#那本 書 在 桌子上. have one-CL/that-CL book ZAI table on (CL: classifier, ZAI: locative marker) ‘There is one/#that book on the table.’ The Definiteness Effect, however, does not apply across the board to English or Mandarin existentials. As shown in the following examples, a definite postverbal NP is allowed in some cases. (3) A: Is there anything to eat? B: There is the leftover chicken from last night. (4) 有 那個 學生 在 教室裡, 老師 不能 放心 have that-CL student ZAI classroom in, teacher not can rest assured ‘There is that student in the classroom, the teacher cannot rest assured.' Sentences (3B) and (4) are existential constructions because the basic function of such constructions, namely introducing a new entity to the discourse, is fulfilled. A problem arises as to why existential sentences like (1) and (2), exhibit the Definiteness Effect, but (3B) and (4) do not. To account for the acceptability of (3B), Abbott (1993) argues that an existential sentence allowing a definite NP in a focus position “requires special contextualization,” and as (3B), this kind of CONTEXTUALISED EXISTENTIAL cannot be discourse initial. In this paper, we assume Abbott’s account and find that it not only explains when a definite NP is allowed in Mandarin existentials, but also accommodates the generalization found by pervious researches, Huang (1987) and Li (1996). However, contrary to Abbott’s observation that existentials with definite NPs usually do not appear initially in discourse, Mandarin data shows that in some circumstances, this kind of existential can be discourse initial, as illustrated in (4) and (5). Besides, different from the view of Prince (1992) and Ward and Birner (1995) that a postverbal NP in an existential will represent a hearer-new entity, sentence (5) may introduce hearer-old entities. (5) 從前 只要 有 我的妹妹/張三 在 教室裡, 老師 就 不能 放心 ago as long as have my sister/Zhangsan ZAI classroom in, teacher then not can rest assured ‘Long ago as long as there was my sister/Zhangsan in the classroom, the teacher cannot rest assured.’ In sum, it is not the linguistic form, the definiteness of the NPs, that is incompatible with the existential construction. It is the function of existentials that confines the kind of NPs that can appear in it. The tendency of the NP to be formally indefinite in existentials is not independent. It is a reflex of the tendency to be informationally new. As long as some context information is given, a definite NP can convey novel information and thus appear in an existential sentence.

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Discourse Analysis

Research on iconicity and word order in Mandarin Chinese (henceforth MC) investigates the correlation between the sequence of linguistic elements in the sentence and the temporal, spatial, and causal characteristics of the events they describe. Such correlations are captured through a number of organizational principles, generally referred to in the literature as conceptual or cognitive word order principles. Among the most significant principles are the principle of temporal sequence, the principle of temporal scope and that of whole-before-part. Conceptual principles are of great interest for several reasons: first, they exhibit an iconic nature and show how and to what extent MC word order (henceforth WO) mirrors both universal and culture-specific conceptualizations of space, time and cause-effect logical relations. As such, they are easy to understand and remember, thus providing interesting applications to MC language instruction. Moreover, according to Tai (1985, 1989, 1993), Ho (1993), Hu (1995) and Loar (2011) among others, such principles bear great explanatory power in that they underlie several seemingly unrelated syntactic patterns and constructions. This chapter provides an introduction to organizational principles underlying MC word order, with a specific focus on conceptual (or cognitive) principles, such as the Principle of Temporal Sequence (PTS) and that of Whole-Before- Part (WBP). Specifically, it presents (i) the theoretical approach they are grounded in, (ii) their potential in language description, as compared to grammatical rules, and (iii) their applications to language acquisition and discourse analysis. These principles are shown to operate both at the micro-levels of phrase and clause and at higher levels of discourse and text. The discussion avails itself of natural language in use; unless otherwise specified, all examples are drawn from corpora, such as the PKU corpus of Modern Mandarin Chinese, Peking University or Ho’s corpus of spontaneous spoken texts (Ho 1993: 14-6).

Studies in Polish Linguistics, 2014

We provide a semantic account of the free ordering of NP-internal elements in Chinese and argue that this provides evidence for the lack of DP in Chinese. We also extend this account to the Mandarin plural marker-men, tying the definiteness of-men phrases and its number/definiteness interaction to the classifier status of-men and the lack of DP in Chinese. We show that the binding properties of Chinese possessors also provide evidence for the no-DP analysis of Chinese. Finally, we propose a semantic account of certain differences in the order of NP-internal elements between Chinese and Serbo-Croatian, another language that lacks DP.

MDPI, 2023

This article deals with the analysis of word order variation regarding subjects, direct objects, and non-direct object phrases called the “Target” in the corpus of languages of northwestern Iran, viz., Armenian, Mukri Kurdish, and Northeastern Kurdish (Indo-European), Jewish Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (Semitic), and Azeri Turkic (Turkic). The objective is to examine the effects of formal and semantic (in)definiteness in combination with animacy on Target word order variation to find out which one can be a triggering factor.

2020

ABSTRACT. This study investigated the hypothesis that nouns in article-less languages are not ambiguous with respect to definiteness, and that this unambiguity is evident in the interpretation of ungrammatical ‘bare’ (i.e. article-less) singular nouns in L2 English. In order to probe the interpretation of such bare nouns, we administered an acceptability judgment task to intermediate L2 learners of English whose native language was Mandarin, with sentences containing bare singular nouns in different syntactic positions and discourse contexts. We found that bare subjects were most acceptable in contexts that required definites, while bare objects were equivalently acceptable across contexts. We conclude that the interpretation of bare nouns in L2 English is not ambiguous, but rather follows a systematic pattern determined by argument position and discourse context.

Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 2008

It has been assumed since Kitagawa and Ross 1982 that noun phrases in Chinese and Japanese are quite similar in structure. They are N-final in surface word order, they employ "modifying markers" (de in Chinese and no in Japanese) extensively, and they require classifiers for numeral expressions. In this paper, we argue that contrary to appearance, they have quite distinct structures. We examine N'-ellipsis in the two languages, and present supporting evidence for the hypothesis argued for by Simpson (2003), among others, that Chinese noun phrases are head-initial. According to this hypothesis, de is D and a classifier heads another projection within DP. Japanese noun phrases, on the other hand, are head-final. No is a modifying marker, as proposed by Kitagawa and Ross (1982), and classifier phrases are adjuncts modifying nominal projections. Our discussion shows that Kayne's (1994) analysis N-final relatives applies elegantly to Chinese but not to Japanese. It thus suggests the Japanese relative clauses are head-final throughout the derivation.

Current Research in Chinese Linguistics, 2021

This paper discusses the syntactic and semantic properties of post-verbal durative/frequency phrases in Mandarin Chinese. We have presented several analyses of post-verbal durative/ frequency phrases in the generative literature and pointed out that none of them can correctly predict the syntactic distribution which is affected by both aspectual suffixes and the referentiality of objects. Furthermore, we have examined some syntactic and semantic similarities between post-verbal durative and frequency phrases that are ignored in the previous studies. Building on the evidence from ellipsis, semantic scope and parallelism between nominal and verbal domain, this paper provides a unified account that analyzes the post-verbal durative/frequency phrase as the specifier of a functional projection FP between vP and VP. The functional head F contains a [+measure] or [+counting] feature that checks with the specifier. Referential objects occur in the Spec,VP, whereas non-referential objects occur in the complement position of VP.

2017

Many studies on bare nouns have come to an agreement that these nominals have a special status that distinguishes them from regular indefinites, in the form of semantic (pseudo)incorporation (Farkas & de Swart 2003, Chung & Ladusaw 2004, Dayal 2011, Krifka & Modarresi 2016, a.o.). However, there is far less consensus on whether (and if yes, how) this status is reflected in the domain of discourse. Chung & Ladusaw (2004) claim that incorporated nominals in Chamorro are transparent, i.e., they support anaphora just as regular indefinites do. However, Farkas & de Swart (2003), Dayal (2011), Modarresi (2014), and Krifka & Modarresi (2016) argue that bare nouns in Hungarian, Hindi and Persian have reduced discourse transparency as compared with indefinites.1 This study addresses the debate over the discourse status of bare nouns by presenting an experimental study of bare nouns in Mandarin. We compare pronominal anaphora with a bare noun, as exemplified in (1), to similar anaphora suppor...

This paper presents a corpus-based approach to investigating the distribution of adverbial clauses and their subjects (overt vs. non-overt) in spoken and written Mandarin Chinese. It argues that the choice of subject type is determined by three variables, namely, given-new information, semantic function of adverbial clause and text type. In written Chinese, the distribution of subject types varies across semantic classes of adverbial clauses, but not across text categories. The influence of semantic classes on the distribution of subject types, however, depends on text type. For the same semantic function, the decision as to whether to include a subject is governed by given and new information. In contrasting the distribution of subject types of adverbial clauses across speech and writing, it was found that both spoken and written Chinese use more overt subjects in clauses of reason. Methodologically, this study demonstrates how quantitative corpus-linguistic methods can be used to supplement introspective theoretical assumptions with authentic, observable evidence in order to gain better insights into the behaviour of adverbial clauses in speech and writing.

The Proceedings of the Ninth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics, 2008