Chinese Linguistics in Budapest 漢語語言學在布達佩斯
edited by Redouane Djamouri and Rint Sybesma
This is the first volume in the Chinese Linguistics in Europe (CLÉ) series. It was published in 2006, by the EHESS/CRLAO, as the tenth volume in the Collection des Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale. 146 pp. ISSN 667367, ISBN 2-910216-09-8. Regular price: € 25 / US$ 30; EACL members: € 15.
It contains a refereed selection of the papers that were presented at the 4th bi-annual meeting of the EACL which was held at the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Department of East Asian Studies of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, 20-22 January 2006.
Table of contents and Abstracts
Table of contents
Edith Aldridge: VP-internal Quantification in Old Chinese
Christoph Anderl: Notes on the development of modal verbs and their functions in Late Middle Chinese texts
劉秀瑩: 禁忌的漂白－初探「死」的語法化過程與極性補語的用法
Yoonjeong Kim: 可能补语的非及物化
Zhang Jisheng & Jeroen van de Weijer: A Constraint-Based Account of Tone Sandhi in Shaoxing Chinese
Henning Klöter: Transcribing Chinese in the 19th century: transferability and applicability
Elena Papapavlou: Transcribing Chinese in Modern Greek. A historical study and the present-day reality
Valentina Pedone: Patterns of language choice for the second generation Chinese bilinguals in Italy
Li-Hao Yeh Angela Ku-Yuan Tzeng: The Effect of Association in Bilingual Memory
Abstracts (in alphabetical order according to author’s last name)
VP-internal quantification in Old Chinese
Edith Aldridge
This paper proposes an analysis of wh-fronting in Archaic Chinese as quantificational A’-movement to a focus projection between the subject and VP. What distinguishes this proposal from previous analyses of Archaic Chinese wh-constructions is its ability to provide a unified analysis of wh-constructions with other types of VP-internal quantification, i.e. constructions involving relative operators and quantifiers, which also had to be located outside the VP in overt syntax. The challenge for a unified analysis is that each of these elements occupies a different position between the subject and VP. This paper rather focuses on what these constructions have in common and proposes that there was a ban in Archaic Chinese on the appearance of quantificational material inside the VP at the time of Spell-Out. From a diachronic standpoint, it is important to note that Archaic Chinese wh-words were, unlike their modern counterparts, quantificational operators. This paper demonstrates that Archaic Chinese wh-words did not exhibit the behavior associated with variables, as they do in modern Chinese. The paper further shows that the loss of wh-movement in Chinese correlates with the ban on quantificational material within VP.
Notes on the development of modal verbs and their functions in Late Middle Chinese texts
Christoph Anderl
There have been significant changes concerning the modal system between the period of Archaic Chinese and Late Middle Chinese. During this period a variety of new modal markers appeared, including modal verbs, sentence final particles, adverbs, semi-grammaticalized phrases, and interrogative pronouns. The development reached a peak during the late Tang-Five Dynasties period, and early Song. During that period new literary genres appeared which made use of the contemporary colloquial language. Types of these texts include many dialogues and describe the lively interaction between individuals. In order to recreate the situational context of these encounters a complex system of modal markers is employed.
The paper gives a short historical outline of aspects of these developments and focuses on the system of modal verbs in Late Middle Chinese. It is demonstrated that the number of modal verbs had increased significantly, especially those indicating deontic and epistemic modality. Many of the modal verbs eventually formed disyllabic compounds. Depending on their pre-modal meanings as full lexical verbs, the functional realm and semantic range of many modal verbs is specialized and restricted. In addition, certain modal verbs expressing volition developed extended functions such as the marking of imminent action or conditional sentences. Another striking feature of the use of modal verbs in Late Middle Chinese colloquial texts is their interaction with other modal markers; for instance, modal verbs expressing obligation and necessity interact with rhetorical interrogative pronouns, verbal suffixes, intensifying adverbs, and sentence final particles.
可能补语的非及物化
Yoonjeong Kim
本文试图通过阐述可能补语的非及物化现象，揭示带可能补语的句子 中，受事者出现在句首的例子更符合可能补语的语用功能。可能补语非及物化现象，主要用可能补语的静态性和”得P2″的”受事-指向”特征来解释: 关于可能补语的静态性，提出可能补语的句法结构本身就表现[-动态]特征; ”P2″ 的受事-指向特征可说明受事者的话题化。同时，根据可能补语的静态性、受事者的话题化、非及物化等现象，提出可能补语表示被动意义的假
设。
Transcribing Chinese in the 19th century: transferability and applicability
Henning Klöter
The 19th century saw the rapid development of missionary language studies in Southern China. Word lists, spelling books, and dictionaries were compiled for the purpose of teaching local languages to newly arriving missionaries; Christian texts were translated into local languages for the purpose of preaching to the local population. Missionary linguistics ventured into various terrae incognitae, most notably in the fields of orthography development and dictionary compilation.
This article introduces missionary efforts in devising an alphabetic orthography for the Southern Mǐn language. Two aspects of orthography design are analyzed, viz. phonological analysis and selection of letters and diacritics. It is shown how phonological analysis drew on traditional Chinese phonology of Southern Mǐn rhyme books. The question which letters should represent Southern Mǐn sounds was a controversial issue. One group of missionaries, most notably the Americans Elijah Coleman Bridgman and Samuel Wells Williams, advocated an orthographic scheme which was applicable to different Southern Sinitic varieties. Orthographic transferability across different languages was achieved by using various diacritics. This approach, however, was in conflict with the needs of missionary teachers and printers in situ who favored easy application of alphabetic writing above cross-linguistic transferability.
禁忌的漂白－初探「死」的語法化過程與極性補語的用法
劉秀瑩和吳翠萍
死亡在中國社會中是個禁忌，與死有關的事物都是避而不談的。然而，在現代用法中，「死」的出現頻率極高且大多不再具有原本的禁忌用法。本研究將探討「死」的禁忌意涵是如何經由語法化過程漸漸漂白。「死」從原始的禁忌語意透過一些途徑（如：譬喻、類推）衍生出其他的語意。在衍生過程的初期，禁忌的用法仍然保存，到了衍生過程的後段，「死」已經漸漸虛化，不再具有指涉『生命結束』的禁忌用法。另外，我們也將特別探討表達極致程度的動補結構。「死」可以出現在動詞之後表達極致的意思，這樣的演變是遵循世界語言語法化的規律。這種因為結構組合而產生的極致用法並非偶然，我們發現動詞加上特定成分的語詞當補語就會產生極度的語意。
Transcribing Chinese in Modern Greek. A historical study and the present-day reality
Elena Papapavlou——Ruhr University, Bochum
This paper focuses on the transliteration of Chinese in Modern Greek. The first examples presented are of Chinese place names encountered in the 1808 publication of “New Methodical School Atlas Newly Printed for the Use of Greek Schools”. We examine, chronologically, numerous examples of transliterations (primarily of proper names and geographical names) from books, periodicals and film. The material shows that there is little uniformity in the Greek spelling of Chinese words, which partly related to the history of the Greek orthography, partlky to the fact that the transliterations in Greek are based on different Latin or Cyrillic transcription systems. Sionce there is a lack of academic research on Chinese in Greece, there is no transliteration system of Chinese in Modern Greek. Despite the inconsistencies, there are some orthographic rules to be found in standard works of grammar (e.g. Triandafillidi 1913, 2002) and in dictionaries (e.g. Babiniotis 2002) for the transliteration of foreign names in Modern Greek. Besides, there are also other systems followed independently by publishing houses and individuals.
The focus of this paper is on the description and analysis of the principles underlying existing Greek transliterations, and discusses the problem of an adequate transliteration of Chinese in Modern Greek based on the phonology systems of the two languages.
Patterns of language choice for the second generation Chinese bilinguals in Italy
Valentina Pedone
As the Chinese immigrant community settles down in Italy, a new generation formed by individuals who where born in Italy or arrived at an early age, gradually develops a language usage that differs both from their parents and their Italian peers. The three linguistic varieties that constitute their speech repertoire, Italian, Putonghua and a Chinese dialect, are selected in their daily speech according to a number of factors.
In this paper I attempt to design an overview of language choice by the Chinese second generation in Italy, taking advantage of a corpus gathered from a 55 questions questionnaire submitted to 78 students of Chinese origin in a community school of Putonghua in Rome.
The results presented here deal mainly with repertoire and dominance. The findings show how the dominant variety in the subjects’ repertoire changes according to the point of view we adopt to consider their language use. Overall, dialect is to be considered the dominant variety in the diachronic perspective, while Italian turns to be the dominant variety when we consider fluency and frequency of usage. While dialect keeps being the favoured choice in the parental domain, Italian is the language of the school and of peer networking, where it shares the domain along with Putonghua. This way the latter appears to be the only choice that is marked both from the ethnic and the intergenerational point of view.
The Effect of Association in Bilingual Memory
Li-Hao Yeh and Angela Ku-Yuan Tzeng
The purpose of the research reported here is to examine the effect of association in the processing between L1 and L2 in bilingual memory. Two experiments were conducted. In experiment 1, the association between semantic similarity words was generated and measured in cross-language primed LRT. In experiment 2, whether the association could be found both between lexical and conceptual representations was examined. Several conclusions were drawn. First, L2 may not
directly connect to the concept, at least for non-fluent bilinguals. Secondly, association was found between the two languages in both lexical representation and conceptual representations by cross-language LRT. Furthermore, because Chinese and English have no shared lexical features, the two languages were probably “general separate, but interconnection” in bilingual memory.
A constraint-based account of tone sandhi in Shaoxing Chinese
Zhang Jisheng & Jeroen van de Weijer
This paper investigates the tone sandhi rules of Shaoxing Chinese and presents a constraint-based account of these rules. In Shaoxing Chinese there are four low-register tones and four high-register ones, which can be combined in different ways in phrases as well as reduplicated structures. We present the different output tones resulting from tone sandhi and present an account in terms of output constraints. It will turn out that a number of these constraints can be related to cross-linguistic well-attested strategies, e.g. a general preference for right-prominence, a dispreference for identical tones, and, of course, the necessity of having an output tone. As such, this paper contributes to the description and analysis of Chinese language and our understanding of the relation between tone and other forms of metrical structure.