Sinitic Languages

This topical section brings together five essays that cover different aspects in the intersection of language and society in contemporary Taiwan. Briefly outlining the contents of each essay, this introduction focuses on the question how the essays complement each other in terms of level of analysis, empirical basis, and interdisciplinary approach. It shows how research on language planning on the national level and its underlying ideology ties in with analyses of the language choice behaviour of individual speakers at the receiving end of language planning. Claims derived from individual case studies in turn require quantitative data to allow for generalisability. Finally, interdisciplinary research in the intersection of language and media studies helps us to understand how language standards and dominant language ideologies are disseminated, reproduced, and challenged.

In this paper, “paper redemption(紙贖)” and “paper punishment(罰紙)” was discussed. In the literature of the Ming Dynasty, terms such as “paper redemption” and “paper punishment” did indeed cause some misunderstandings. This article first confirms that the terms “paper redemption” and “paper punishment” refer to prisoner's paper, and further explores why Ming Dynasty people used the terms “paper redemption” and “paper punishment”. In the process of analyzing the evolution of Ming Dynasty officials' understanding of prisoner’s paper, it was found that the emergence of terms such as paper redemption and paper punishment has certain historical reasons. In the Ming Dynasty, people generally had a negative understanding of prisoner paper, believing that this system brought a heavy economic burden to the lower class and the literati would grant amnesty to the innocent and exempt them from paying paper, resulting in the majority of those who needed to pay paper being guilty. Therefore, this tendency led to the phenomenon of prisoner’s paper being referred to as “punishment paper”.

В статье рассматривается система вопросительных местоимений категории предмета и лица на материале всех ветвей диалектов группы Минь сино-тибетской семьи. Главная задача исследования — выявить различные инновации в этой системе, возникающие в миньском регионе, вскрыть ле- жащие в их основе механизмы и (методом исключения) определить, какие из на- блюдаемых лексем можно вывести на праминьский уровень. Помимо обычного сравнительно-исторического метода, анализ учитывает также ареальный фак- тор, отмечая возможное влияние на формирование современных систем вопросительных местоимений со стороны как соседних диалектных групп, так и общенационального литературного языка.

This article describes the 34th Sino-Tibetan Linguistics Conference held in Kunming, Yunnan China October 24-28, 2001 with emphasis on the Tibeto-Burman branch of this large language family. The Tibetan Studies Internet Newsletter was produced by The Center for Research on Tibet, Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio 44106, USA.

This study is the first to comprehensively describe suffixing morphology in Zhangzhou Southern Min, an under-described Sinitic language spoken in southern China. Suffixation can be derivational in this language to create new lexemes and expand local vocabulary but can be inflectional to convey grammatical information. It can also induce special tone sandhi patterns on either the lexical bases or the suffix itself. The bases that can undergo suffixation are cross-categorical, ranging from nouns, verbs, adjectives, classifiers, noun phrases, verb phrases to adjective phrases. However, the occurrences of suffixes, lexical bases, and derived items are subject to severe constraints from diverse factors of semantics, word class, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics. These reflect that the suffixing is not an isolated morphological event but rather involves systematic and complex interfaces among different linguistic levels. This study is a breakthrough to fill the research gap, while substantially broadening and deepening our knowledge of suffixation as an important morphological device in Sinitic languages. The study also contributes well-attested empirical data to the typology of suffixation in the world's natural languages while shedding important light on how Sinitic languages and other so-called isolating languages should be better defined from a modern linguistic perspective.

A brief historical sketch is also made of Archaic Chinese (5 th c.-2 nd c. BCE) and in Medieval Chinese in the attempt to trace the origin of these different negative markers. We show that a syntactic, word-order based typology is insufficient to account for these data as Sinitic languages, particularly Min and Yue, possess a large set of semantically distinct negative morphemes, used in what is generally called standard sentence negation as well as in imperatives. These include volitional, perfective, irrealis and imminent kinds of negative markers that provide evidence of the close semantic ties between aspect, modality and negation, as Yue-Hashimoto has observed (1993: 89-92). The main outcome of this analysis is to construct a semantic typology for standard clause negation and imperatives in order to explain these phenomena.

usually a strength, but there are moments when one wishes for a more critical attitude. Robert, perhaps, takes the glowing accounts of evangelical success he draws on too much at face value. It doesn't matter whether George Harris really won all the street-corner religious debates he provoked. However, Robert's consideration of the posters as tools of persuasion would only be enhanced by a consideration of missionary accounts of preaching with posters as another kind of persuasive tool, in this instance directed at audiences outside of China, upon whose donations the CIM in part depended. More seriously, it would be valuable for scholars with this sympathy and expertise to openly engage with scholarship that is sceptical about missionary contributions. The most relevant work here might be Larissa N. Heinrich's book The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body between China and the West (Duke University Press, 2008), which argues that missionaries helped generate and perpetuate the damaging stereotype of China as the "sick man of Asia." Taken as a whole, however, this lively, thoughtfully designed volume is a rich contribution to our understanding of Chinese culture in the early 20th century, with each chapter supplying fresh insights and information. It is suited for use in courses on a range of topics, from religion to propaganda, to Chinese history, art history and visual culture, and the transcultural exchange of ideas and images. Its value for teaching is enhanced, as mentioned above, by the Chinese Christian Posters website, which can support a variety of student projects, as well as more advanced research.

This article presents a typological survey of verbal numeral classifiers (VNCs) in languages of Eastern Eurasia. As classifiers of occurrence (e.g., to V once, to V twice), VNCs are prevalent in languages of East Asia and Southeast Asia, yet the phenomenon has been largely overlooked in typological studies that have overwhelmingly focused on the adnominal use of numeral classifiers. Analyzing a sample of 543 linguistic varieties, the study categorizes the language families of Eastern Eurasia into three groups based on their use of VNCs: 1) VNCs consistently present in all languages (e.g., Tai-Kadai); 2) VNCs present in some languages (e.g., Sino-Tibetan); and 3) VNCs consistently absent (e.g., Yukaghir). Additionally, the meanings of VNCs are shown to follow a non-random distribution by centering on certain semantic fields, such as quantifying hits with 'verbs of violence'. The study aims to offer the first step toward an areal typological study of VNCs, highlighting the importance of including this phenomenon in future descriptive work.

This paper discusses the problems with the "noun-verb inclusion" hypothesis from the logical perspective. Based on the fundamental attributes of logical axiom，the author reveals the logical problems with the "noun-verb inclusion" Venn diagram in terms of the logical syllogism. The distinctions of different word classes can be made in terms of different set of features，including the morphological feature set in the narrow sense，syntactic constituent matching feature set，and the syntactic distribution feature set. The study shows that word class distinctions in Chinese as an isolating language can only be made according to the syntactic distribution feature set. The noun-verb inclusion hypothesis has made a mistake that the mean term in logical syllogism is not inclusive twice. In terms of the genus and species relationship (hyponymy)，the noun-verb inclusion fails to meet the requirement that all the features of genus must be included in those of species.

An analysis of correlative constructions in Chinese that: (1) gives a principled account of the distribution of correlative markers; and (2) offers an explanation for some puzzling facts about distribution of anaphoric pronouns is presented. It is suggested that previous research has misidentified instances of verb phrase coordination as zero-anaphora in such constructions, which raises a more general question about zero anaphora. It is suggested that better criteria for identification of zero-anaphora are required in languages like Chinese, which lacks corroborative evidence such as agreement morphology. It is concluded, then, that for at least a subset of Chinese, a better account is available without zero-anaphors. (MSE)

This article presents the results of a corpus-based investigation aimed at establishing the criteria defining the post-verbal position of a lexically encoded Subject in MWA, not only in relation to the Object, but to all post-verbal constituents of the clause. The analysis was conducted on a database of 323 main clauses extracted from a corpus of narrative fiction comprising nearly 50,000 words. Theoretically, I relied on Functional Discourse Grammar for the description of the pragmatic, semantic and morphosyntactic levels of organization of the clauses and their interrelations. For information packaging, I also relied on Lambrecht’s (1998) approach. The results of the analysis indicate that the assignment of the syntactic function of Subject to a constituent of the clause is linked to the semantic function of that constituent as the Actor or Undergoer, whereas the position of the constituent to which the Subject is assigned depends on the pragmatic function of the constituent as the Topic or (part of the) Focus.

Ли Ифан Теоретические основы варьирования китайского слога В статье рассматривается специфика соотношения лингвистических категорий слога, морфемы и слова в китайском языке для теоретического обоснования разных фонетических моделей одного и того же слога/ слова. Основные проблемы, анализируемые в статье, связаны с фрагментарностью изучения фонетических процессов в современной китайской речи и необходимостью перенесения центра внимания с письменной китайской речи на устную. Получены выводы о варьировании составляющих слога и повышенном влиянии контекста, напрямую определяющего модели слога/слова, включая слабые формы, и ведущего к образованию разговорных неологизмов. Адрес статьи: www.gramota.net/materials/2/2020/1/53.html

Studying the formation of primitive tribes, European scholars believe that initially there was a group of people with maternal blood relatives who gathered to form tribes. The tribe gradually grew larger, until one group split into a new tribe. Meeting favorable conditions, the group split up and developed, moved far away, and occupied new areas. While the original group is still stuck in the same place, it is not favorable so it cannot develop, remaining a small and weak group. The new group traveled far and wide, but knew that they were not the first builders but also had ancestors who started the business, so they called the starting tribe of the family is Proto. Since the 18th century, following that tradition, European scholars called the European population Indo-European and called the ancestral tribe is Proto Indo-European. Because they believe that if there is Indo-European, then there is also Proto-Indo-European, so they set the task of finding a Proto-Indo-European community.

Dongxiang is a Mongolic language from a peripheral linguistic branch mainly spoken by 300,000 speakers in Southeast Gansu in the People’s Republic of China. The Dongxiang language has been particularly influenced by the neighboring Chinese variety of Linxia, which has induced important changes on the phonological and lexical systems, while causing only a few changes on the syntactic level. In this paper I will discuss the emerging category of classifiers in the Dongxiang language by comparing different sources available. I will show that, even though measure words are present in all Mongolic languages, the use of classifiers is rare and has been induced by language contacts with Chinese. I will describe the different types of classifiers, borrowed or calqued, and will discuss in particular the use and functions of the classifier kozi. This classifier seems to have appeared quite recently and its origin is uncertain. I will show that it cannot be considered as a lexical item, as it d...

Presented paper deals with the morphological category of aspect in Cantonese. Given the lack of a morphological category of tense in Cantonese, aspect holds a particular position in this system, as it is the sole morphological means expressing temporal relations. The aim of the paper is to present the functioning of the various aspects of Cantonese, both perfective and imperfective, based on the theoretical framework presented beforehand, which draws on the previous achievements of linguists in this field. The second section presents what specific morphological means are used to express the category of aspect in Cantonese, which is then followed by a brief discussion of the relation between resultative verb compounds and the perfective aspect. The last, and by far the largest section, presents corpus material which exemplifies the use of different aspect markers. The paper is an attempt to respond to the hitherto lack of consensus among Sinologists about the number as well as the types of aspects that occur in Cantonese.

This article is concerned with the problem of argument-function mismatch observed in the (apparent) subject-object inversion in Chinese consumption verbs, e.g., chi 'eat' and he 'drink', and accommodation verbs, e.g., zhu 'live' and shui 'sleep'. These verbs seem to allow the linking of 3agent-SUBJ theme-OBJ4 as well as 3agent-OBJ theme-SUBJ4, but only when the agent is also the semantic role denoting the measure or extent of the action. The account o¤ered is formulated within LFG's lexical mapping theory. Under the simplest and also the strictest interpretation of the argument-function mapping principle (or the y-criterion), a composite role such as ag-ext receives syntactic assignment via one composing role only; the second composing role must be suppressed. Apparent subject-object inversion occurs when in the competition between the two composing roles, agext, the agent loses out and is suppressed. This account also facilitates a natural explanation of markedness among the competing syntactic structures.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University * The research reported here is conducted within the context of the project 'A comparative study on modification strategies in Chinese and English' (G-YX59), funded by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Research Forum 2006 (Dec 2-3) as well as at an invited talk at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Sep 2006. We would like to thank audiences at both occasions for useful comments and questions. We would also like to thank Zhang Qing-Wen for many fruitful discussions. 'this big' (with demonstration) 'so big' (exclamation)

Using etymological methods, the present study has identified ten (10) Hunnic (Xiongnu) etymologies (etyma) in Xia-Hunnic core member languages. Eight of ten Xiongnu etyma are identified in Yeniseian; seven in Sinitic; six in Hungarian. Some etyma form four regular sound correspondences. These regular sound changes validate the etymological connection between the Xia-Hunnic core member languages. This linguistic connection confirms the identification of Huns (primarily known in Europe) and Xiongnu (primarily known in Asia).

Using etymological methods, the present study identifi ed three Sinitic
and Slavic shared (Sino-Germanic) etymologies (etyma)【鹿, 露, 軸】. There three
etyma form a a rhyme correspondence. This regular sound change validates the
etymological connection in question. Etymon 【鹿】 for ‘deer and similar animals
of the superfamily Cervoidea’ has been identifi ed in Sinitic, Slavic, Germanic,
Baltic, Celtic, Romance, Hellenic, Armenian, Indo-Iranian and Tocharian. The
etymon 【露】for ‘dew’ has been identifi ed in Sinitic, Slavic, Baltic, Romance and
Indo-Iranian. The etymon 【軸】for ‘axle’ has been identifi ed in Sinitic, Slavic,
Germanic, Baltic, Celtic, Romance, Albanian, Hellenic and Indo-Iranian. In words
of Indoeuropeann linguistics, the Proto-Indo-European root *h1ol-ḱ -i- ‘deer, elk’,
*Hros-eh2 ‘dew’ and *h2eḱ s-(i-) ‘axle, axis’ are newly identified in Sinitic.

This paper investigates semantic extensions of the two most significant polysemous function words in Hakka, bun and lau. Though totally unrelated in their original senses, together they came to express the beneficiary role and exhibit a division of labor. Like many other languages, Hakka distinguishes among three kinds of beneficiaries, i.e. recipient beneficiaries, deputative beneficiaries, and plain beneficiaries. Bun is used primarily to express recipient beneficiaries and plain beneficiaries, whereas lau is used primarily to express deputative beneficiaries and plain beneficiaries. Within appropriate contexts, lau can also express recipient beneficiaries. However, bun can never express deputative beneficiaries due to the bi-event structure of the purposive bun constructions in Hakka. The semantic extension of bun is from recipient to recipient beneficiary, and then to plain beneficiary. The semantic extension of lau is from comitative to deputative beneficiary, and then to plain beneficiary. The semantic extensions are justified by invited inferencing (Traugott 1999, Traugott & Dasher 2002) in each stage in the process.

This article intends to put forward the hypothesis that "ʃit5識" grammaticalized from a verb with the meaning of "knowing" to the experiential aspect marker through an analysis of the polysemous structure of the Taiwanese Hailu Hakka language "ʃit5 識".

As with most fields of life, China can trace its history of word standardization back to ancient times, when the first dictionaries (such as Erya, ca. 3 rd century B.C.) appeared. Modern Standard Chinese used in Mainland China-Putonghua-has been subject to standardization since its proclamation as the official national language of China in 1956. The definition states quite clearly that its base is formed by the Northern dialects. This statement concerns also vocabulary. However, it is not a simple matter to make a choice of words which are to be used throughout the country. On the one hand, the so-called "Northern dialects" are spoken by almost 70% of the Han Chinese population, i.e. by about 800 million people. Although the Northern dialects are said to be quite uniform, the vast area that they cover must bring diversity in vocabulary. On the other hand, the remaining 30% of the Han Chinese speak a range of mutually unintelligible tongues, which are bound to penetrate the Northern dialects. The aim of this paper is to show how the lexicon of Putonghua is being codified. An attempt will be made to reveal how the basic vocabulary was selected during the forming of Putonghua in the 1950s. Some of the tools used by the State Language Commission in order to control the process of vocabulary standardization will be described. Moreover, the paper intends to describe the ongoing changes in the Chinese lexicon. It will show the sources of new words that are gradually accepted into the authoritative dictionaries of modern Chinese.

The process of creating a modern national standard language for the whole of China has been long. It started in the beginning of the 20 th century, when it became clear that a common spoken tongue was needed to unite the Chinese people. Thus the concept of Guóyǔ-'national language'-was created. After the founding of People's Republic of China, the work was taken up anew, the standard was renamed Pŭtōnghuà-'common speech.' Its pronunciation is based on the dialect of Beijing, the Mandarin dialects have been the source of lexicon, and grammar has been founded on "model works in báihuà." But how exactly did the work on creating the new standard look like? This paper intends to show the process of codification of the pronunciation of what we now know as Pŭtōnghuà. How it was decided to choose the speech of Beijing as the starting point, how the work was carried out, and also how the standard is changing.

This paper evaluates the conventional approach to documenting Chinese dialects (方言 fāngyán), highlighting both its strengths and limitations. It suggests modifications that are tailored to specific sociolinguistic contexts, with an investigation of the Dapeng dialect serving as a case study. Innovative techniques, including acting, picture naming, and the use of non-Chinese languages, are proposed, depending on the informants' linguistic backgrounds and proficiency levels in different languages and dialects. The study also emphasizes the importance of adapting data collection methods to the informants' literacy levels to prevent the effect of negative transfer from standard written Chinese. Ultimately, the study suggests that a more adaptable and context-specific approach is necessary when documenting minor Chinese dialects.

Passives of oblique objects were claimed to be ungrammatical in sentences containing direct objects. No explanation was provided for this structural restriction. In this paper an explanation is attempted in terms of a clash over the role of affected entity between the subject of the passive sentence and its direct object. This semanticallypragmatically ba~cd'~" '""; ' ,,vns ..... n~ has, apparently, become a fully grammaticized restriction lbJ-many speakers, but not for all. Instances where passives of obliques in sentences containing direct objects are marginally acceptable are discussed. It is claimed that the conflict between the two arguments of the predicate over the role of affected entity, which is" responsible for the iil-formedness of such constructions in gencrai, does not arise in these cases, since the direct object is perceived as an integrz~l part of the verbal unit and not as an argument of the predicate. In this c,-,nnection the non-discreteness of the argument-role of direct objects is considered and it is suggested that the identification of a given direct object as an argument depends on factors ranging from its degree of referentiality to the kind of verb with which it co-occurs in a particular context.

S cholars studying the Chinese writing system, whether they be from the East or the West, agree that the earliest writing system in East Asia is that which appeared in the latter Shang period (ca. 1300-1050 bce) at Anyang 安陽. The different media of writing, oracle bone scripts and bronze inscriptions, together constitute a complete writing system that is able to represent the language used by the nobility in the Shang dynasty, the ancient Chinese (guhanyu 古漢語). Another consensus among the researchers is that writing shown on oracle bones, bronzeware, pottery, and other durable materials provide only partial evidence of the Anyang writing. During the Shang dynasty, most writing were done on bamboo and wooden slips, which deteriorate easily over time. Anyang writing, thus, serves as a starting point for the study of the origin of Chinese writing. 1 Several pottery marks and bronze inscriptions were found from the Erligang 二里崗 site of early Shang Culture (ca. 1600-1400 bce) and the Xiaoshuangqiao 小雙橋 site of the middle-Shang period (ca. 1400-1300 bce), and some were identified by scholars as resembling the clan emblems of the late-Shang period. 2 A piece of oracle bone was also found at the Erligang site, further proving that Erligang was a society that used the written word. Its writing system is probably similar to that of the late-Shang dynasty; however, due to the limited data currently available, scholars are not sure about the extent that this writing system was used, 3 or whether the writing in the Erligang Culture could fully express its language. Any further conclusions await future excavated evidence.

A través de métodos etimológicos, este estudio ha identificado seis etimologías (étimos) que tienen en común (sino-germánicas) las lenguas siníticas y las romances:【犬, 飯, 管, 滿, 挽, 全】. Estos étimos forman una correspondencia de rima. Este cambio sonoro regular valida el vínculo
etimológico en cuestión. El étimo【犬】para ‘can’ ha sido identificado en las lenguas siníticas, romances, germánicas, bálticas, celtas, griegas, el armenio, indoiranias, tocarias, tibeto-birmanas y fino-bálticas. El étimo【飯】para ‘pan’ ha sido identificado en las lenguas siníticas, romances, el
griego antiguo y el armenio. El étimo【管】para ‘caño’ ha sido identificado en lenguas sínticas, romances, el griego antiguo, el albanés, el acadio y otras lenguas afroasiáticas. El étimo【滿】para ‘manar’ se encuentra identificado en las lenguas siníticas y romances. El étimo【挽】para ‘mano’ ha sido identificado en las lenguas siníticas, romances, germánicas, el irlandés antiguo y el hitita. El étimo【全】para ‘sano’ ha sido identificado en lenguas siníticas, romances, germánicas y el albanés.
De acuerdo con la lingüística occidental, el lexema protoindoeuropeo ḱuōn ‘perro’ y las etimologías de palabras latinas panis ‘pan’, canna ‘caña’, mānāre ‘manar’, manus ‘mano’, sanus ‘sano’ se han identificado recientemente en las lenguas siníticas. / Using etymological methods, this study has identified six Sinitic and Romance shared (~ Sino-Germanic) etymologies (etyma):【犬, 飯, 管, 滿, 挽, 全】. These six etyma form a rhyme correspondence. This regular sound change validates the etymological connection in question. The etymon【犬】for ‘dog’ has been identified in Sinitic, Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Celtic, Hellenic, Armenian, Indo-Iranian, Tocharian, Tibeto-Burman and Finnic. The etymon【飯】for
‘food’ has been identified in Sinitic, Romance, Ancient Greek and Armenian. The etymon【管】for ‘cane’ has been identified in Sinitic, Romance, Ancient Greek, Albanian, Akkadian and other Semito-Hamitic languages. The etymon【滿】for ‘overflow’ has been identified in Sinitic and Romance. The etymon【挽】for ‘arm’ has been identified in Sinitic, Romance, Germanic, Old Irish and Hittite. The etymon【全】for ‘sane’ has been identified in Sinitic, Romance, Germanic, and Albanian. In words of Western linguistics, the Proto-Indo-European root ḱuōn ‘dog’ and the
etymologies of Latin words panis ‘pan’, canna ‘caña’, mānāre ‘manar’, manus ‘mano’, sanus ‘sano’ are newly identified in Sinitic.

In Mandarin Chinese, when the verbal perfect aspect marker le occurs with an individual-level predicate, it can denote unexpectedness, functioning as a mirative marker. The mirative le construction is syntactically different from a transitive comparative construction. The paper argues for a parallelism between counterfactual morphology and counter-expectedness morphology. It is shown that the feature [Exclusion] covers both the fake past tense in the former and the fake perfect aspect in the latter.

Classifiers, both nominal and verbal, must be taken into consideration as a parameter in typological studies of the numeral classifier languages. Building on previous work, we will show that nominal and verbal classifiers are mutually dependent both chronologically and in terms of their syntactic position. Cross-linguistic data in general, and Chinese in particular, illustrate this dependency: nominal classifiers develop before verbal classifiers and the word order of the two kinds of classifiers is in a complementary distribution, occurring before nouns and after verbs.

Nominal classification systems are found in the majority of the world's languages, yet there is no agreement as to whether these systems have a function (Singer 2018) or are just 'junk'; some kind of historical accretion (Trudgill 2011). In this study we look at four languages with very different nominal classification systems, tracing how their classes are employed in referent expressions in four corpora annotated with the GRAID system (Haig and Schnell 2014, Haig and Schnell (eds.) 2016). We also look at measures of lexicality and referential density (Haig and Schnell 2016, Bickel 2003, Bickel and Stoll 2010), comparing the extent and nature of referent expression across the languages. While it is well known that animacy and grammatical function influences the expression of nominal classification for example in clause-level agreement, we find that the expression of nominal classification within NPs is also sensitive to animacy and grammatical function. Features that emerge as correlates of referent expression in discourse such as animacy, grammatical function and person also constrain the expression of nominal classification in many languages which suggests that more detailed studies of the use of nominal classification in discourse can show us more about its function. References

Adjectival comparatives like txiki baino txikiago 'smaller than small' in Basque exhibit some striking properties that present a challenge for previous analyses of inequality comparatives. The research on this unstudied type of adjectival comparatives in Basque-henceforth SMALL comparatives-is especially interesting due to the rich morphology and freedom of word order that Basque displays. These two properties are vital for the testing of the hypotheses on the structure of these comparatives. First, the examination of the underlying structure of the standard of comparison reveals that these adjectival modifiers are inequality comparatives with a phrasal standard. Second, the study of the extraction constraints of the standard and the particular distribution of SMALL comparatives evidence the fact that the standard marker in these comparatives behaves as a coordinating conjunction, and that these modifiers can appear inside a Determiner Phrase, in contrast with previously analysed adjectival comparatives. These properties are explained by assuming the functional analysis of adjectives and comparative markers (-ago '-er, more'), and proposing a coordination analysis of these phrasal comparatives. The study of SMALL comparatives hence shows that the coordination analysis of comparative structures is necessary not only for clausal comparatives (Napoli & Nespor 1986 for Italian; Sáez 1992 for Spanish; and Lechner 2004 for English and German) but also for phrasal comparatives such as SMALL comparatives.

Despite a large body of research, the linguistic nature of exhaustivity in single wh-questions is unresolved. Moreover, little empirical evidence exists as to which related structures pattern with bare wh-questions regarding exhaustivity. This paper explores the felicity of various exhaustivity violations in unembedded single bare wh-questions in German and compares them to related structures. In two novel felicity judgment experiments, a total of 441 participants rated exhaustive as well as non-exhaustive plural and non-exhaustive singleton answers to wh-questions or statements in a questionnaire. Answers were based on picture stimuli depicting individuals performing various actions. The felicity of non-exhaustive answers was compared across four main test conditions: bare wh-questions (wer ‘who’), wh-questions with a lexical exhaustivity marker (wer alles ‘who all’), plural definite descriptions contained in a restrictive relative clause (e.g., “the people who are fishing in the g...

This paper argues that inalienable relational nouns in Mandarin Chinese, specifically kinship nouns (e.g. father, sister) and body-part nouns (e.g. head, face), have an implicit reflexive argument. Based on a syntactic comparison between kinship nouns, body-part nouns, and locally and long-distance bound reflexives, we argue that the implicit reflexive arguments of kinship nouns and body-part nouns differ from each other: The implicit argument of body-part nouns must be locally bound, whereas that of kinship nouns can either be locally bound or long-distance bound. Therefore, we conclude that these two types of implicit arguments in Mandarin Chinese correspond to locally and long-distance bound reflexives, respectively. Finally, we relate this difference to binding theory and the theory of logophoricity.

Анализируются контексты употребления синонимичных глаголов современного китайского языка со значением «делать». Основным методом исследования выступает расширенный вариант компонентного анализа с привлечением методов анализа словарных дефиниций и анкетирования носителей китайского языка. В качестве источника языкового материала выбран лингвистический корпус BCC. Определены дифференциальные семы в составе пяти синонимичных глаголов, выявлены случаи взаимозаменяемости.

Ключевые слова: синоним, сема, компонентный анализ, лингвистический корпус, семантическая дифференциация, функциональная дифференциация

The morpheme ‘give’ is among the most well-studied lexical items in the realm of grammaticalization. This study sets out to provide a typological and areal analysis of the distinct forms and multiple functions of ‘give’ in 27 varieties of Hui Chinese, a lesser-known group of Sinitic languages. Making use of both primary and secondary data, we have identified ten different functions of GIVE, namely (i) lexical verb ‘give’, (ii) recipient marker ‘to’, (iii) benefactive marker ‘for’, (iv) purpose marker, (v) permissive marker, (vi) passive marker, (vii) pretransitive disposal marker, (viii) allative marker, (ix) locative marker ‘at/in’, and (x) temporal marker ‘till’. The Hui varieties covered in this study generally showcase the syncretism of a minimum of five of the functions above simultaneously. Semantic extension, polygrammaticalization, and cooptation are shown to be the major mechanisms behind the polyfunctionality or polysemy sharing of the morpheme ‘give’. Our study contributes to the understanding of the role that grammaticalization, especially contact-induced grammaticalization, plays in forming linguistic areas. In addition, it casts doubt on the basicness of ‘give’ in assessing the genetic relatedness of languages in the world.