2,088 research outputs found
The Role of Prosody in Shaping Sinitic Morphology: Two Case Studies
No full textIn this paper, we discuss two case studies on how prosody
has conditioned the evolution of morphology in Mandarin
as well as in other Sinitic languages. After a concise
overview of Feng’s (1997, 1998, 2001, 2018, inter alia)
application of the principles of Prosodic Morphology to
Mandarin, we shall discuss two issues in the diachronic
development of Chinese/Sinitic morphology: the creation
and development of derivation-like elements; particularly
prefixes/prefixoids (Arcodia, 2012, 2023); and phenomena
of reduced/nonconcatenative morphology in Northern
Chinese dialects (Arcodia, 2013, 2015, 2021; Lamarre, 2015; Lamarre & Ōta, 2017). We shall argue that prefix-like items, despite being generally considered to be morphological constituents, actually seem to follow the prosodic pattern of phrases, i.e. right-to-left footing. We shall also show that grammatical morphemes may undergo strong reduction in a large number of Mandarin and Jin dialects (Arcodia, 2021), and this may lead to cumulative, nonconcatenative exponence, thus constituting a possible counterexample to Feng’s (2018) ‘Morphosyllabic Constraint’. We shall argue that this is made possible by some prosodic characteristics of Northern dialects which are not commonly found e.g. in Southern Sinitic: mostly,
the presence of stress and of the neutral tone
More on areal distinctions in Sinitic: focus on Northern China
No full textChinese ‘dialects’ are characterised by a considerable degree of diversity, and some major differences within Sinitic follow areal patterns, in which contact is often claimed to play a crucial role. Following Hashimoto’s (1976) hypothesis on the ‘Altaicisation’ of Northern Chinese, and the ‘Taiisation’ of Southern Chinese, several other studies have proposed further areal distinction within Sinitic. Szeto, Ansaldo, and Matthews (2018) showed that a North-South divide exists not only in Sinitic, but also within the Mandarin group; Szeto & Yurayong (2021) identify four major areal groups for Sinitic languages, and Northern China is seen as the least diverse region within Sinitic. However, recent research (Arcodia 2021) has shown that there is an area within Northern China, spread over the Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, and Shandong provinces, in which we find Sinitic languages possessing some features not seen (or uncommon) elsewhere: nonconcatenative morphology, object markers based on speech act verbs, and structural particles with an l-initial. In a subset of those varieties, we find also (proto-)markers of tense (Arcodia 2023). In this paper, we shall discuss those features in the context of the areal typology of Northern China, and we shall offer a comparative analysis of parallel features in Central and Southern Sinitic varieties, showing how they are clearly differentiated from what is found in the North (see e.g. Chappell 2023). Also, we shall assess the role that contact (with Sinitic and non-Sinitic languages) may have played in the development of the features considered here
On a possible convergence area in Northern China
No full textThe received view that the differences among Sinitic languages are mostly limited to their phonology and, to a lesser extent, to the lexicon (Chao 1968) has been challenged in recent years, with plenty of studies showing that Chinese ‘dialects’ are, indeed, diverse at all levels, including morphology and (morpho-)syntax (see Chappell 2015a for an overview). Some major differences within Sinitic follow areal patterns, in which contact is often claimed to play a crucial role. In our contribution, we would like to propose that there is an area within Northern China, spread over the Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, and Shandong provinces, in which we find Sinitic languages possessing some features not seen (or, at least, uncommon) elsewhere. These include: 1. reduced/nonconcatenative morphology (see Arcodia 2013, 2015; Lamarre 2015); 2. object markers based on speech act verbs (see Chappell 2013); 3. structural particles with an l-initial (see Chen A. 2013, a.o.). Based on our own survey of a sample of 96 dialects, we shall discuss the distribution of these features, as well as their possible origins
On prefixation in Modern Chinese
No full textIn the literature on Chinese word formation, the (possible) distinction between the processes of ‘derivation’ and ‘compounding’ is still an unresolved issue (see e.g. Pan, Yip & Han 2004; Dong 2005; Arcodia 2012). Word-formation elements which display high productivity and always appear in a fixed position with respect to the base word (in a particular usage), such as 学 xué ‘branch of knowledge’ (as in 心理学 xīnlǐxué ‘psychology’) have been analyzed as affixes (e.g. Yip 2000), as ‘affixoids’ (类词缀 lèicízhuì; Ma 1995) or just as compound constituents (Dong 2004).
In this paper, we propose a reassessment of prefixation in Modern Chinese. Following Arcodia (2012), we discard the ‘prefix’ vs. ‘prefixoid’ distinction, since grammaticalized morphemes in Chinese (as well as in most languages of the Mainland East- and Southeast Asian area; Bisang 1996) very often do not show the formal correlates of grammaticalization (i.e. ‘secondary grammaticalization’ in the sense of Traugott 2002). In the framework of Construction Morphology (Booij 2010), we treat potential prefixoids as fixed slots in a construction. In this analysis, the main difference between affixes/affixoids and regular compound constituents lies in their fixed position, their stable selectional properties and, above all, in the fixed, conventionalized meaning they contribute, as opposed to the more ‘open’ interpretation for compound constituents (Scalise, Bisetto & Guevara 2005). The sample items we chose for our analysis are drawn from a selection of the literature on the topic (see the Appendix below); following Basciano & Bareato (2020), we shall rely on web corpora (as e.g. the BCC Corpus and the Leiden Weibo Corpus) for the analysis of the use of complex words.
We will show that potential prefixes in Chinese have different properties: there are class-mantaining prefixes (as 前 qián- ‘former’), class-changing prefixes (as 多 duō- ‘multi-’), as well as prefixes with ambiguous properties with respect to word-class assignment (as 非 fēi- ‘non-’). We will compare ‘native’ patterns and patterns which seem to follow a foreign model, showing that they do not constitute coherent subsets in terms of their behaviour. We will argue that the differences between prefixes and suffixes in Chinese (see Jia 2019) may be partly explained by the different role of lefthand constituents and righthand constituents in compounding (unlike e.g. Romance languages). However, as conventionalised constructions used for word formation, prefixation patterns also have properties which do not fit in the general picture of headedness and word-class assignment in the morphology (and syntax) of Modern Chinese: above all, the fact that the word class of ‘prefixed’ words is often inconsistent with that of the corresponding base (non-prefixed) word, as e.g. 贸易 màoyì ‘commerce’ > 非贸易 fēi-màoyì ‘non-commercial’, but both endocentric nouns and adjectives are generally right-headed in Chinese (Ceccagno & Basciano 2007). We will argue that this is a major difference between prefixed and suffixed items in Chinese, since the latter always seem to define the word class of the complex word; also, it can be taken as an argument in favour of analysing prefixes as a separate morphological phenomenon, distinct from suffixation and from compounding
Linguistic categories, language description and linguistic typology – An overview
No full textIn this paper, we propose a critical discussion of the rationale for this volume. After a short introduction (Section 1), an outline of the long-standing opposition between language particular description and universal grammar in the history of the language sciences is provided (Section 2). This opposition indeed represents the substrate on which our ‘comparative concepts debate’ is based: a summary of the debate, both in the form it had in the LINGTYP mailing list (January / February 2016) and in the subsequent monographic issue of Linguistic Typology 2016, thus, is offered in Section 3 and Section 4. Some critical consideration on the debate and on its relation with the various branches of linguistics are presented in Section 5. An overview of the papers included in the volume closes this introduction (Section 6)
Coordinating nominal compounds: universal vs. areal tendencies
No full textCoordinating compounds, i.e. complex word forms in which the constituent lexemes are in a coordination relation, may be divided into two classes: hyperonymic, in which the referent of the whole compound is the "sum" of the meanings of the constituent lexemes (Korowai yumdefól '(her) husband-wife, couple'; van Enk, Gerrit J., & Lourens de Vries. 1997. The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their language in its cultural context. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 66), and hyponymic, where the compound designates a single referent having features of all the constituents (English actor-director). It has been proposed that languages choose either type as the one with the "tightest" marking pattern; whereas the crosslinguistic tendency is to have tighter hyperonymic compounds, most languages of Europe rather have tighter hyponymic compounds (Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco, Nicola Grandi, & Bernhard Wälchli 2010. Coordination in compounding. In Sergio Scalise & Irene Vogel (eds.), Cross-disciplinary issues in compounding, 177-198. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins). In this paper, we will test this assumption on noun-noun compounds in a sample of 20 Standard Average European languages and in a balanced sample of 60 non-SAE languages, arguing that the preference for hyperonymic compounds is best explained by the default referential function of nouns; in hyponymic compounds, on the other hand, nouns are used to indicate properties. We will then compare nominal and adjectival coordinating compounds, showing that for the latter the hyponymic compounding pattern is the dominant one, as adjectives are prototypical property-denoting words
La derivazione lessicale in cinese mandarino
No full textQuesto studio si propone di analizzare un insieme dei fenomeni di formazione di parola del cinese moderno per i quali pare appropriata l’etichetta di “derivazione”, con l’intento di sopperire ad una carenza della ricerca di ambito morfologico e di linguistica cinese, ovvero una caratterizzazione del fenomeno della derivazione in cinese che si basi su criteri coerenti a livello cross-linguistico. Pur essendo questo un lavoro analitico dedicato alla fase moderna del divenire storico della lingua cinese, sarà dato rilievo anche alla prospettiva diacronica, inserita nel quadro teorico della ricerca sulla grammaticalizzazione
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