Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics

10 cycle: see heavenly stems 12 cycle: Zodiac | see also earthly branches 12 semitone musical system: Musical Notation A Dictionary of the Chinese Particles (1974): Chinese Linguistics in North America A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing (1838): Western Views of the Chinese Language A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese: as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect (1868): Chinese Linguistics in North America A’-dependency: Empty Categories A’-movement: Bèi 被-construction | Movement Structures A’-movement, sentence processing: Sentence Processing:…

Chinese is a language that has evolved in the zone of interaction between two major areal-typological complexes that may be labeled “Sinitic” and “Altaic”. The Sinitic type is dominant in southern China (south of the Yangtze River) and Southeast Asia, while the Altaic type is prevalent in Western and Northern China and Northeast Asia, including Turkestan, Mongolia, Manchuria, Siberia, Korea, and Japan. The terms “Sinitic” and “Altaic” should here be understood as areal-typological labels with no…

“Altaic” is the conventional name for a group of languages and language families, widespread and dominating in parts of Central and Northern Asia. It alludes to the Altai mountain range in Southern Siberia, where earlier scholarship tried to locate the original habitat of the speakers of these languages in prehistoric times, a position which, however, is no longer defended today. Altaic languages were spoken and written by two of the three last ruling dynasties of China, the Yuán or Mongol (1279…

Ambiguity, the availability of multiple meanings for the same linguistic form, is universal in human language. This survey explores the phenomenon for Běijīng Mandarin across its lexicon, syntax, and morphology, presenting a range of analytical options and dilemmas. 1. Introduction Ambiguity in language is the availability of multiple meanings for the same linguistic form, as for English trunk, meaning ‘stem of a tree’, ‘luggage space at the back of a car’, ‘elephant’s nose’ etc.; and for Mandarin jiǔ, meaning ‘nine’, ‘liquor’, ‘long time’, etc. In daily conversation, po…

1. Introduction In contemporary theoretical linguistics, the term “anaphora”, which is derived from the Greek word αναφóρα ‘carrying back’, has three distinct senses. First, the term can be used to refer to a relation between two or more linguistic expressions, wherein the interpretation of one (the anaphor or anaphoric expression) is in some way determined by the interpretation of the other (the antecedent), as in (1). Secondly, the term is deployed to distinguish different types of NPs in the Chomskyan genera…

The term "Chǔ 楚 language(s)" ( Chǔ yǔ 楚語) or "Chǔ dialect(s)" ( Chǔ fāngyán 楚方言) refers to a variety or varieties of the Chinese language spoken in the area of the ancient Chǔ polity. Chǔ dialects are supposed to be akin to the Old Chinese language as it is reflected in Shījīng 詩經 ( Book of songs) poetry and the phonetic series ( xiéshēng 諧聲) in the received early Chinese writing system. They are also believed to have contained elements of various non-Sinitic languages which would have been introduced by the many non-Chinese peoples indigenous to the region.     1. History and Geography of th…

During the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BCE), today’s Wú-speaking region belonged to the states of Wú 吴 and Yuè 越. According to Lǚ shì chūn qiū 吕氏春秋 ( Mr. Lü’s Annals; 3rd cent. BCE), these two states had identical customs and mutually intelligible languages ( xísú tóng, yányǔ tōng 習俗同, 言語通), distinct from those of the northern state of Qí 齊. We also know that the language of Wú and Yuè was different from that of the western state of Chǔ 楚, because Liú Xiàng’s 劉向 (77–6 BCE) Shuō yuàn 說苑 ( Garden of Persuasions) records that Èjūn Zǐxī 鄂君子皙, a member of the Chǔ royal family during the …

1. General Ethnically the Ānóng 阿儂 are members of the composite Nù 怒 nationality, which consists of speakers of the Trung-Ānóng-Rawang languages on one hand and speakers of the quite distinct Nùsū 怒蘇 and Zauzou (Róuruò 揉若) languages on the other. Ānóng (autonym: a³¹nuŋ³⁵) is in a lower-level linguistic subgroup of Tibeto-Burman comprised of Trung (Dúlóng 獨龍), Ānóng, and Rawang. The Ānóng discussed here is a moribund subset of a larger group of Nungish (or Rawang-Dúlóng languages), a low-level subgroup of Tibeto-Burman. “Ānóng” is sometimes romanized as Anung. 1.1 Geographic distri…