Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics

H perspective: Speech Acts and Speech Acts Verbs H[igh] language: Diglossia habitual aspect: Aspect, Premodern habituals: Genericity Hager, Giuseppe (1757–1819): Chinese Linguistics in Italy hái 還 ‘still’: Aspectual Adverbs Hǎiānhuà 海安話 (Jiānghuái 江淮, Jiāngsū): Neutral Tone Hǎifēng 海豐 county: Shē 畲 Language Hǎikǒu 海口, tone: Tone, Music and Singing Hǎilù 海陸 Hakka (Kèjiā 客家): Táiwān: Language Situation Hǎilù 海陸 Hakka: Táiwān: Language Situation Hǎilù 海陸 Hakka (Kèjiā 客家), spoken corpus: Táiwān Spoken Chinese Corpus Hǎinán Huí: Languages and Language Families Hǎinán 海南: Austrone…

Research on the phonological history of a language often relies on written materials, and in this regard Chinese characters, which have been in continuous use from their creation several thousand years ago until the present, may seem to be a boon in the diachronic study of Chinese. However, Chinese characters are logographic. In other words, a character typically represents a morpheme, monosyllabic in pronunciation but giving no direct information about the phonetic make-up of the syllable. Furt…

It is essential to distinguish between the mechanisms of historical syntax and its motivations, as scholars working on historical syntax try to find answers to the following four questions: (i) What are the main mechanisms leading to grammatical change? (ii) What motivates it? (iii) What are its probable paths of progression through time? (iv) What are its end results? (Hopper and Traugott [1993] 2003:32).  1. Mechanisms of Grammatical Change The model for historical syntax presented here and developed in detail in Peyraube (2005, 2015a), has only two internal me…

1. General The Hlai (Chinese Lí 黎) languages comprise one of the four main branches of the Kra-Dai (also known as Tai-Kadai) phylum. They are spoken almost exclusively on Hǎinán, China, and their speakers were very likely the first inhabitants of the island. The Hlai are currently the largest "minority group" on Hǎinán, which they share with various groups of Chinese (speaking varieties of Sinitic including Hakka or Kèjiāhuà 客家話, Yuè 粵 (Dānzhōuhuà 儋州話), and Southern Mǐn 閩 (Hǎinánese), as well as o…

  The Hmong-Mien languages (also called the Miáo-Yáo 苗瑶 languages) are a genetic group of languages spoken in East and Southeast Asia that has two branches, Hmongic and Mienic. In China, these languages are spoken in Guìzhōu, Húnán, Guǎngdōng, Yúnnán, Sìchuān, Húběi, Jiāngxī, and Hǎinán Provinces, Chóngqìng City, and the Guǎngxī Zhuàng Autonomous Region. The alternative name of the language group, Miáo-Yáo, is based on the Chinese names for two ethnic groups, Miáo 苗 and Yáo 瑶. However, the ethnic identity does not correspond to the linguistic ident…