1,720,999 research outputs found
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)
On a possible convergence area in Northern China
Full text linkThe 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
Lingue come confini, lingue come barriere: la ‘guerra fredda’ del cinese standard nella Cina contemporanea
No full textIn questo contributo, dopo un inquadramento storico delle concezioni e degli atteggiamenti nei confronti della diversità linguistica nella cultura cinese, ci dedicheremo all’analisi del rapporto tra lingua standard, dialetti e lingue minoritarie nella Cina contemporanea, focalizzandoci sul ruolo della lingua come elemento identitario, demarcatore di confini, e sui cambiamenti innescati dalla pressione del Putonghua
Macanese negation in comparative perspective: typology and ecology
Full text linkMacanese, the near-extinct Portuguese creole of Macao, is an Asian Portuguese Creole language closely related to Malaccan Papia Kristang. In this paper, I argue that a distinctive feature of Macanese vis-à-vis other Asian Portuguese Creoles is its system of negation; specifically, its usage of the negators nunca and nádi. Negators deriving from Portuguese nunca ‘never’ and não há-de ‘shall not’ are attested in several Asian Portuguese Creoles: while their usage varies considerably, the former usually acts as the negator for realis predicates, whereas the latter typically negates irrealis predicates. In this paper I argue that, differently from other Asian Portuguese Creoles, Macanese nunca is also the only available negator for adjectival and nominal predicates, independently from TAM features. Through a comparison with other Asian Portuguese creoles, and with the adstrates and substrates of Macanese, I also discuss the possible origin of these features
Il sorgere in Italia della linguistica orientalista: la linguistica cinese e giapponese
No full textItalian scholars have always had a very important role in the genesis and development of Chinese and Japanese linguistics, a fact which holds true to the present day. Italians authored some seminal works in those fields, even though their contribution was not always properly acknowledged. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze, in a concise fashion, the history of the study of languages of China and Japan in Italy, providing an overview of the most important Italian (or anyway Italian-language) contributions on those languages. Our overview starts from the earliest known descriptions of Sinitic and Japonic languages written by Italians, and covers the period until the end of the XX century, as linguistic studies on Chinese and Japanese in Italy reached full maturity in the latter two decades of the past century
On prefixation in Modern Chinese
Full text linkIn 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
A synchronic and diachronic analysis of potential dāk 得 in Cantonese
No full textThe morpheme dāk 得 has a broad range of functions in modern Cantonese, including
being used as a particle introducing an adverbial construction, as a particle introducing the so-
called ‘potential complement’ (we refer to this as the ‘long potential’) and as a verbal (quasi-
)suffix (the ‘short potential’), which indicates that the state of affairs denoted by the verb may
happen. In this paper, we first offer a general introduction on dāk 得in modern Cantonese, which
we then compare with Mandarin de 得 and parallel acquisitive modals in Lao, Vietnamese, and
Zhuang, also with a focus on their modal meanings. We will then provide a diachronic overview
of Cantonese dāk 得based on a sample of texts from the 19 th and early 20 th century written in
Cantonese by Western scholars, missionaries, and officers. The historical Cantonese data will be
analyzed and compared to the development of the cognate morpheme de 得 in mainstream
Chinese written sources: because of the limited diachronic depth of Cantonese data, this is
necessary to delve further into the history of this item and of the related constructions. We will
argue that: a. all the contemporary Cantonese (and Mandarin) uses seem to derive from the
attainment sense of postverbal de/dāk 得; b. the vast majority of possible word order
configurations were attested at some point in the recorded history of Chinese, but there appear to
be also some patterns which could be specific to Cantonese; c. there seems to be a (partial)
structural and semantic split between the ‘short’ potential and the ‘long’ potential; d. the adverbial
construction probably had a more straightforward development
- …
