The Cartography of Chinese Syntax

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190210699
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This edited volume provides new insights into the architecture of Chinese grammar from a comparative perspective, using principles of cartography. The chapters in this book map out the "topography" of a variety of constructions in Chinese, specifically information structure, wh-question formation, and peripheral functional elements. The syntactic structure of Chinese makes it an ideal language for this line of research, offering a window into the origin of heavily "scrambled" constructions often observed in other languages.

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190210699
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
This edited volume provides new insights into the architecture of Chinese grammar from a comparative perspective, using principles of cartography. The chapters in this book map out the "topography" of a variety of constructions in Chinese, specifically information structure, wh-question formation, and peripheral functional elements. The syntactic structure of Chinese makes it an ideal language for this line of research, offering a window into the origin of heavily "scrambled" constructions often observed in other languages.

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780190210717
Category : Chinese language
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
This edited volume provides insights into the architecture of Chinese grammar from a comparative perspective, using principles of cartography. The chapters in this book map out the 'topography' of a variety of constructions in Chinese, specifically information structure, wh-question formation, and peripheral functional elements.

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190210680
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This edited volume provides new insights into the architecture of Chinese grammar from a comparative perspective, using principles of cartography. Cartography is a research program within syntactic theory that is guided by the view that syntactic structures contain grammatical and functional information that is ideal for semantic interpretation - by studying the syntactic structures of a particular language, syntacticians can better understand the semantic issues at play in that language. The chapters in this book map out the "topography" of a variety of constructions in Chinese, specifically information structure, wh-question formation, and peripheral functional elements. The syntactic structure of Chinese makes it an ideal language for this line of research, because functional elements are often spread throughout sentences rather than clumped together as is usually dictated by language-specific morphology. Mapping Chinese syntactic structures therefore offers a window into the origin of heavily "scrambled" constructions often observed in other languages. The book includes a preface that will discusses the goal of cartography and explains how the collection contributes towards our understanding of this approach to syntax. The subsequent seven original articles all contain original syntactic data that is invaluable for future research in cartography, and the collection as a whole paints a broader picture of how the alignment between syntax and semantics works in a principled way.

Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese

Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese PDF Author: Victor Junnan Pan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351655949
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese offers a comprehensive survey on the fine structure of the sentence peripheral domain in Mandarin Chinese from a cartographic perspective. Different functional projections hosting sentence-final particles, implicit operators and other informational components are hierarchically ordered according to the "Subjectivity Scale Constraint" functioning at syntax-discourse interface. Three questions will be essentially addressed: What is the order? How to determine such an order? Why such an order? This research not only gives a thorough examination of the peripheral elements in Chinese but also improves the general understanding of the ordering issue in the left-periphery crosslinguistically. This book is aimed at scholars interested in Chinese syntax or generative syntax.

Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Yen-hui Audrey Li
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199945675
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective collects twelve new papers that explore the syntax of Chinese in comparison with other languages.

Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography

Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography PDF Author: Fuzhen Si
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027259771
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This book illustrates recent developments in cartographic studies, seen from a comparative perspective. The different chapters explore various aspects of theoretical and descriptive syntax, bearing on such topics as selection, causativity, binding, light verb constructions, the structure of the high and low peripheral zones. Syntactic issues in the study of dialects and ancient languages are also addressed. The languages investigated include French, Hebrew, Standard Dutch and the Ghent dialect, Etruscan, Japanese, English, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and the Teochew dialect. The intended readers of this book include researchers and students working on natural language syntax, the interface between syntax and semantics/pragmatics, and comparative and typological linguistics, as well as scholars interested in particular languages such as East Asian and Romance languages.

New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax

New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Waltraud Paul
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110393972
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Mandarin Chinese has become indispensable for crosslinguistic comparison and syntactic theorizing. It is nevertheless still difficult to obtain comprehensive answers to research questions, because Chinese is often presented as an "exotic" language defying the analytical tools standardly used for other languages. This book sets out to demystify Chinese. It places controversial issues in the context of current syntactic theories and offers precise analyses based on a large array of representative data. Although the focus is on Modern Mandarin, earlier stages of Chinese are occasionally referred to in order to highlight striking continuities in its history. VO order is one such constant factor, thus invalidating the idea that Chinese went through a major word order change from OV to VO and back to OV. Another claim often made for Chinese as an isolating language, viz. the existence of an impoverished inventory of parts of speech, is likewise refuted. Other long debated issues addressed here include the relevance of the dichotomy topic vs subject prominence and the role of Chinese as a recurring exception to crosscategorial harmonies posited in typological studies.

The Syntax of Chinese

The Syntax of Chinese PDF Author: C.-T. James Huang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521590587
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
The past quarter of a century has seen a surge in Chinese syntactic research that has produced a sizeable literature on the analysis of almost every construction in Mandarin Chinese. This guide to Chinese syntax analyses the majority of constructions in Chinese that have featured in theoretical linguistics in the past 25 years, using the authors' own analyses as well as existing or potential alternative treatments. A broad variety of topics are covered, including categories, argument structure, passives and anaphora. The discussion of each topic sums up the key research results and provides new points of departure for further research. This book will be invaluable both to students wanting to know more about the grammar of Chinese, and graduate students and theoretical linguists interested in the universal principles that underlie human languages.

Chinese Grammar at Work

Chinese Grammar at Work PDF Author: Shuanfan Huang
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027271364
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Chinese Grammar at Work adopts a cognitive-functional approach and uses a corpus-based methodology to examine how Chinese syntax emerges from natural discourse context and what the evolving grammar at work looks like. In this volume the author weaves together an array of fresh perspectives on clause structure, constructions, interactional linguistics, cognitive science and complex dynamic systems to construct a grammar of spoken Chinese. The volume contains discussions of a large number of topics: contiguity relation, the roles of repair strategies in the shaping of constituent structure, non-canonical word order constructions, pragmatics of referring expressions, classifier constructions, noun-modifying constructions, verb complementation, ethnotheory of the person and constructions specific to the language of emotion, sequential sensitivity of linguistic materials, meaning potential in interaction, the nature of variability and stability in Chinese syntax from the perspective of complexity theory. The result is a volume that highlights the connections between language structure, situated and embodied nature of cognition and language use, and affords a true entrée to the exciting realm of Chinese grammar.

Introduction to Chinese Syntax

Introduction to Chinese Syntax PDF Author: Xu Dan
Publisher: L’Asiathèque
ISBN: 2360570633
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
“…how fortunate it is that a native Chinese speaker who has been very well trained in general and Chinese linguistics, and who knows how to make good use of both older and contemporary research, has offered a work which meets so well the dual goals of pedagogy and science which she set out to attain.” (Professor Claude Hagège, chair of theoretical linguistics at the Collège de France) The book's seven chapters each consist of sections which are presented as a question, followed by a discussion of the solution. Altogether are presented about 80 such questions and a solution for each one. Each section ends with a summary to facilitate comprehension. The topics are representative of common problems encountered by learners of Chinese. They are presented in order of increasing difficulty, with the goal of stimulating interest in research. Whenever possible, diachronic and dialectal perspectives are presented, in order to give a more well-rounded view of the topic. These approaches offer a global view of contemporary problems in syntax. Having some knowledge about Chinese dialects, as well as some notion of the evolution of Chinese syntax, can help immensely in understanding the Chinese language, and also facilitates analysis and discovery.