Chinese Syntax

The position of the reason-asking ‘why’ has been under much discussion for the past few years. Although some have suggested that it is situated within the CP domain, its exact position varies depending on different proposals. Meanwhile, a noncanonical why-like ‘what’ has also attracted much attention. Some assume it to be merged to the top of a sentence while some assume it to be merged lower. In this study, new evidence is provided to show that in Chinese the reason-asking ‘why’ should be merged to the Int(errogative)P in the CP zone, confirming Rizzi’s (2001) and Tsai’s (2008) claims, whereas the why-like ‘what’ should be merged as low as in vP but target the topmost of a clause, supposedly ForceP, by covert movement.

This study investigates two types of adjunct WHAT merged at peripheral positions in Chinese. The L-WHAT denotes a why-interpretation with an aggressive, prohibitive force. A VP shell construction is adopted to accommodate the L-WHAT. The H-WHAT is merged at the left periphery of a sentence and is exclusively used in expressing a speaker’s refutatory force without interrogativity. The two WHATs are encoded with different modalities: the L-WHAT with root modality while the H-WHAT with epistemic modality. Such is a natural consequence if it is assumed that the former is derived from vP and the latter CP. It is proposed that the interpretation of the two types of WHAT is compositionally derived from the modality and the speaker force that each WHAT carries. This study not only explores the origins of different interpretations of adjunct WHATs, but also advances a uniform approach in mapping the speaker force unto syntax.

En el horizonte de una investigación acerca de las solidaridades entre las artes del lenguaje (lengua, poética, escritura) y maneras de concebir lo real o habitar un mundo, el seminario interrogará el legado filosófico-literario de China clásica, una poética sostenida y radical de la imagen que ha tenido un impacto contemporáneo que va desde la poesía al cine.
En un primer bloque, tras introducir el rendimiento metafísico-epistemológico de la imaginación lingüística (formas poéticas y gramatológicas como síntesis de lo real que conforman una visión de mundo determinada), se hará un examen comparativo entre la economía de la ‘metáfora’ en la poética/retórica occidental y la economía de la ‘imagen dinámica’ en la poética china, discerniendo las solidaridades básicas entre sus actuaciones estéticas y las cosmovisiones respectivas. Partiendo de la sentencia heideggeriana –“lo metafórico no existe más que en el interior de las fronteras de la metafísica [occidental]”– y asistidos, entre otros, por los trabajos de F. Nietzsche, J. Derrida, P. Ricoeur y F. Jullien, se indagarán al menos dos series de relaciones que permiten delimitar la concepción china del arte como ‘correlación’ y ‘proceso’, desmarcándola de la poiesis y mimesis que se impone en Occidente desde Aristóteles. Estas son: (i) las relaciones entre espacialidad y figura, con énfasis en las solidaridades entre la correlación de la imagen dinámica y una metafísica horizontal e inmanente, frente a las solidaridades entre la sustitución metafórica y el dualismo jerárquico de la ontología; (ii) las relaciones entre temporalidad y figura, con énfasis en las solidaridades entre la vibración dinámica de la imagen y una concepción de la temporalidad como proceso o flujo, frente a las solidaridades entre la traslación estructural en la metáfora y una concepción del tiempo como movimiento.
En un segundo bloque se interrogarán las grandes concepciones clásicas del pensamiento poético, con atención a las maneras en que promueven el estatuto de la imagen como respuesta subjetiva y entelequia de lo real. La atención a la poética expresiva de tendencia confuciana estará centrada en la doctrina de la ‘corrección de los nombres’ y en la concepción de la imagen como respuesta subjetivo-emocional ante la objetividad-natural. El examen de la poética metafísica de tendencia taoísta pondrá atención a la imagen como búsqueda de ‘representación más allá de la representación’ y entelequia de las correlaciones cósmicas (actualización de las virtualidades de la inmanencia).
En un tercer bloque se examinarán las diversas formas de la imagen en la poesía china, con atención a su síntesis de lo real como correlación y proceso. Tras discernir los elementos de lengua/escritura que contribuyen a la promoción e impacto de la imagen dinámica, el énfasis estará en ciertos arreglos mayores (paralelismo, cuartetos, octetos, etc.) que forjan una tensión característica entre lo subjetivo-proposicional y lo objetivo-imagístico, así como en otras formas de significación por fragmentación y yuxtaposición (montaje) que han tenido un impacto decisivo en las artes contemporáneas.
En un bloque final, dedicado precisamente a los ecos contemporáneos de esta poética de la imagen, se interrogará el método ideogramático en la poesía moderna (del imagismo de Ezra Pound a la poesía concreta brasilera), así como el impacto del ideograma y la imagen dinámica en el montaje cinematográfico.
El desarrollo de este programa general se hará en contrapunto con cuatro sesiones intercaladas, a cargo del Dr. Fernando Pérez, quien nos introducirá a los elementos esenciales de la poética y escritura chinas, así como a al legado respectivo de Wang Wei, Li Po y Du Fu, las tres cumbres indiscutibles de la Edad de Oro.
Los ecos de las formas de la poética china en las estrategias contemporáneas del cine serán abordadas por el cineasta Raúl Ruiz.

Medieval Chinese Syntax " Medieval Chinese Syntax " aims to provide a rough sketch of the development of function words and syntactic structures during the Chinese Medieval period, including Early Medieval Chinese (c. 0-700 CE) and Late Medieval Chinese (c. 700-1100).

Abstract: [Verbal phrasemes and grammatical metaphor in Spanish and Chinese]. This paper analyzes the phrasemes with a verbal function from a contrastive point of view between two typologically opposed languages, in search of similarities, differences and overlaps, not only from a cross-linguistic perspective but also in relation to the neighboring subcategories within that paradigm. Taking as a starting point the English
phrasal verb, we distinguish eight subclasses of verbal phrasemes, not counting the satellite verbs, which we finally exclude from the paradigm. The first part of the paper defines and delimits these categories, the second describes them specifically for  Spanish, and the third does so for Chinese. The conclusion discusses the results
and implications of this cross-linguistic comparison.

This paper argues that long-standing problems in the analysis of Chinese, such as the question of word classes and grammatical relations, can be resolved, or actually done away with completely, if we take a constructionist approach in the analysis. This means the constructions are taken as basic, so we only need to look at the propositional functions of elements in the construction (referential, modifying, or predicative), and do not need to posit global categories such as word classes and grammatical relations.

This volume collects papers presenting corpus-based research on Chinese language and linguistics, from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. The contributions cover different fields of linguistics, including syntax and pragmatics, semantics, morphology and the lexicon, sociolinguistics, and corpus building. There is now considerable emphasis on the reliability of linguistic data: the studies presented here are all grounded in the tenet that corpora, intended as collections of naturally occurring texts produced by a variety of speakers/writers, provide a more robust, statistically significant foundation for linguistic analysis. The volume explores not only the potential of using corpora as tools allowing access to authentic language material, but also the challenges involved in corpus interrogation, analysis, and building.

It has been intriguing to linguists that Chinese languages or dialects have a head-initial VP and yet a head-final NP. This property is typologically marked (Dryer 1992), defying an elegant and straightforward account based on processing efficiency (Hawkins 2004) or generative grammar (e.g. directionality parameters, e.g. Huang 1982, Travis 1984). Recent generative accounts attempt to harmonize VP and NP order in Cantonese, arguing that Chinese NPs are underlyingly head-initial, and modifiers (e.g. relative clauses) are moved to pre-nominal position (Saito et al. 2008, Simpson 2002, 2005). Whereas these derivational accounts apparently capture certain facets of cross-linguistic variation, they leave a number of questions unanswered, notably the treatment of adjective order, that is, whether adjectives are also generated post-nominally and are moved to pre-nominal position subsequently.
This paper attempts to discuss the possible empirical and theoretical problems of these accounts. In addition, based on some naturally-occurring code-switching data involving Cantonese and English, I propose a non-derivational account which simply suggests that  an overt functional category such as ge3 or a classifier inherently determine head-complement or head-modifier order in Cantonese NP. On the other hand, the head-initial VP/VO order may be accounted for by more traditional devices such as the directionality parameter or others. Since VP order and NP order are determined by different mechanisms in Cantonese, disharmony is indeed possible. The resultant picture of phrase structure portrayed here is seemingly more compatible with cognitive grammar or constructional grammar where a phrase may be more schematic (such as [V NP]VP) or more specific (such as [NP/RCL/Adj  ge3/classifier N]NP).

While forms of left dislocation and topicalization serve topic management
functions, the status and function of right dislocation are less clear. Various studies
have treated it as afterthought, a repair device, a focus marking device, or a form of
illocutionary emphasis. However, the Chinese data (Mandarin and Cantonese) also
pose particular problems for structural analysis, as these forms in Chinese exhibit
violations of syntactic integrity and coreferentiality. Previous syntactic and pragmatic
analyses only partially explain their structure or use, but a more comprehensive
explanation of both has been lacking. This paper examines the roles of syntax and
information structure, and proposes a more unified pragmatic explanation, with a
refined model of information structure. Right dislocation phrases are treated as a form
of minor or secondary information, with their coherence deriving from pragmatics.
Specifically, these phrases follow constraints of an information structure hierarchy,
which accounts for their structural integrity.

Semantics of Chinese Questions: An Interface Approach is the first major study of Chinese questions, especially wh-questions, within the framework of Alternative Semantics. It takes an interface approach to study the syntax, semantics and phonology of questions and proposes a phonological scope-marking strategy in Chinese questions, based upon experimental data. It also incorporates historical linguistic data regarding the grammaticalization of sentence-final particles such as –ne and –ma to study the formal diachronic semantics of questions. Primarily suitable for scholars in the field of Chinese linguistics, this book makes new theoretical contributions to the study of questions.

This paper has made two claims pertaining to the derivation of
Mandarin Chinese directed motion constructions, herein referred to as Directional Complexes (DCs). It is first shown that a distributional ‘locative object restriction’ exists in DCs. After showing Theta-theoretic evidence against categorizing the postverbal components of DCs as verbs [+V], it has gone on to argue against a Lexicalist account for these constructions.

This thesis aims to explore the adjectival modification in Mandarin Chinese numeral classifier constructions. The distributions and restrictions of adjectival modification are examined and explained in terms of formal syntactic and semantic theories. It is argued that left-peripheral adjectival modification is derived via movement from the adnominal modification and therefore only predicative modifiers which located in the higher functional projection zone can be moved out based on Cinque’s (2010) theory. The reduplicated modifiers, however, can be base-generated in preverbal position and form a modification relation with the selected modified elements. The relation is achieved via a logical form movement, categorical selection and semantic selection. This thesis also reviews the many taxonomies of Chinese numeral classifier system and proposes a new classification based on the syntactic, semantic and mathematical features of the unit words.

In this thesis, I argue for the following two major points: (1) the possible positions of adjectival modification in Chinese numeral classifier constructions include the following four: (a) adnominal position, (b) pre-classifier position, (c) left-peripheral position and (d) preverbal position, and (2) nominal unit words in Mandarin Chinese should be at least categorized into three major types: (a) classifier, (b) measure word, and (c) kind unit word.

漢語構詞法分析的提出可上溯至19世紀末的《馬氏文通》，該書雖首創「駢列」、「加字」、「前加」等概念，但有關的構詞法論述乃散見於各章中，對有關問題尚未有充分的重視及探討。直至20世紀初，黎錦熙在《國語講壇》中將「複字名詞」分為「合成的」、「並行的」、「聯屬的」、「對待的」、「叠用的」、「帶語尾的」六類，可以視為漢語構詞法研究之始。上世紀中葉開始，由於受到結構主義語言學的影響，複合詞的結構問題漸受語法學家的重視，並多運用句子成分的分析方法討論構詞，例如高名凱在《漢語語法論》明確提出以「成素跟成素之間的造句關係」來分析複合詞的結構；陸志韋《漢語的構詞法》指出「單就它的各部分的意義上的關係來說，可以是構詞和造句法所同有的」；而趙元任A Grammar of Spoken Chinese首次將複合詞的按其結構分為主謂複合詞、並列複合詞、主從複合詞、動賓複合詞和動補複合詞五大類，是為現代漢語複合詞句法形成研究之濫觴。

In this study, we propose a syntactic structure for Chinese Causative Resultative V-Vs (CR V-Vs), which are also known as “resultative verb compounds”, in the attempt to account for the semantic ambiguity phenomenon observed in some instances. We claim that a possible interpretation of a CR V-V should be compatible with the proposed structure and must be culturally recognized. We showcase our account’s explanatory and predictive power by presenting some CR V-Vs with semantic ambiguity (and non-ambiguity).

EACL-11
11th International Conference of the European Association of Chinese Linguistics (EACL-11)
Date: September 25 – 27, 2020
Location: Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Conference website: https://sites.google.com/view/eacl-11/home

The 11th International Conference of the European Association of Chinese linguistics (EACL) will be held in Olomouc, Czech Republic. It will be jointly organized by the EACL board and by the Department of Asian Studies and the Sinofon project, the Department of English and American Studies, and the Department of General linguistics, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic.
Invited speakers:
Huba Bartos (Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary)
Redouane Djamouri (CRLAO, CNRS, Paris)
Ziyin Mai (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
John Whitman (Cornell University)

As one of the most studied syntactic phenomena in modern Mandarin Chinese, the Ba construction has received continuous attention in Chinese syntax literature while its complex properties have excluded a clear analysis. Recently, the Ba has been proposed as either an overtly realized little verb (v) in the Verbal Shell structure or a functional head which takes the vP as its complement. Nevertheless, which proposal of the two is more appropriate for the Ba construction is still in question. The present paper analyzes the two constructions and proposes that the Ba is the head of a “baP” which takes the vP as its complement. The paper first reviews the syntactic and semantic properties of the Ba construction and shows that in modern Mandarin Chinese, the Ba is unlikely to function as a verb. Then, the case checking procedure of the Ba construction is analyzed, which provides new supporting evidence for treating Ba as a functional head higher than vP. Finally, the “baP” proposal is tested in the five major variants of the Ba construction. Based on the above analyses, the paper comes to the conclusion that the “baP” structure better represents the various Ba sentences than the little verb proposal.

In Chengdu Chinese, degree intensifiers for APs/VPs are attested to pair with three different types of sentence-final particles (SFPs), i.e., the FinP-level, the FocP-level and the ExclP-level SFPs, which function to complete a sentence, encode a focus and express exclamation. In our analysis, a degree intensifier projects a DegP, which pairs with one of the three sentential projections, viz., FinP, FocP and ExclP. This pairing is motivated by feature checking, as intensifiers contain the uninterpretable semantic features of [+Fin], [+Foc] or [+Excl], which need to be checked by sentential projections. Due to the inalienable sentential functions, intensifiers are barred from occurring in any kind of non-finite contexts. Furthermore, FinP and FocP are within the vP-domain, whereas ExclP is in the CP domain. Thus, ExclP-type intensifiers, unlike FinP-type and FocP-type intensifiers, defy relativization. This study of associating degree intensification with sentential functions not only explains the syntactic behaviors of Chengdu intensifiers but also sheds new light on the well-known Mandarin hen puzzle.

In Chengdu Chinese, degree intensifiers for APs/VPs are attested to pair with three different types of sentence-final particles (SFPs), i.e., the FinP-level, the FocP-level and the ExclP-level SFPs, which function to complete a sentence, encode a focus and express exclamation. In our analysis, a degree intensifier projects a DegP, which pairs with one of the three sentential projections, viz., FinP, FocP and ExclP. This pairing is motivated by feature checking, as intensifiers contain the uninterpretable semantic features of [+Fin], [+Foc] or [+Excl], which need to be checked by sentential projections. Due to the inalienable sentential functions, intensifiers are barred from occurring in any kind of non-finite contexts. Furthermore, FinP and FocP are within the vP-domain, whereas ExclP is in the CP domain. Thus, ExclP-type intensifiers, unlike FinP-type and FocP-type intensifiers, defy relativization. This study of associating degree intensification with sentential functions not onl...

The Chinese Causative Resultative V-V, also referred to as "resultative verb compound", is a construction that expresses caused-result meanings. A prominent feature of this construction exists in its word order: the cause-denoting V and the result-denoting V are in adjacency. While exhibiting compound nature, this construction also shows productivity, semantic compositionality, and semantic ambiguity. Within the theoretical framework of the Minimalist Progrram, under the general assumptions of Distributed Morphology, this study proposes a structure for this construction, attempting to account for its properties holistically. We propose that these V-Vs involve root-selecting causativization and Manner Conflation. In spite of being syntactically formed, each V-V functions in a similar way as a V 0 .

The traditional observation that Chinese wh-arguments do not exhibit wh-island effects may be only apparent. With new evidence from “how-many” phrases, it is demonstrated that Chinese has wh-island effects even with wh-arguments. What nullifies such effects is in fact the disguise of D-linkedness. Although the lack of wh-island effects seems to pattern Chinese wh-construals with Japanese ones, further tests show that these two languages are still different with respect to strong island effects, (anti-)crossing effects, and multiple wh-interpretations. The finding leads to the need to reinvestigate the mechanisms underlying the scope-taking wh-elements of wh-in-situ languages on the one hand, and those triggering wh-island effects on the other.

In Chengdu Chinese, degree intensifiers for APs/VPs are attested to pair with three different types of sentence-final particles (SFPs), i.e., the FinP-level, the FocP-level and the ExclP-level SFPs, which function to complete a sentence, encode a focus and express exclamation. In our analysis, a degree intensifier projects a DegP, which pairs with one of the three sentential projections, viz., FinP, FocP and ExclP. This pairing is motivated by feature checking, as intensifiers contain the uninterpretable semantic features of [+Fin], [+Foc] or [+Excl], which need to be checked by sentential projections. Due to the inalienable sentential functions, intensifiers are barred from occurring in any kind of non-finite contexts. Furthermore, FinP and FocP are within the vP-domain, whereas ExclP is in the CP domain. Thus, ExclP-type intensifiers, unlike FinP-type and FocP-type intensifiers, defy relativization. This study of associating degree intensification with sentential functions not onl...

We argue that the contrastive dislocation to the low peripheral position in
Mandarin Chinese does not target phrase markers, like TopicP or FocusP, contra recent proposals that attempt to extend the cartographic theory to the low IP-area. We argue that such dislocations are best analyzed as PF movements, which display the total reconstruction effect and do not affect the LF interface. We show that the contrastive dislocation to the low periphery in Mandarin Chinese is subject to the same PF licensing
condition found in the Object Shift construction in Scandinavian. Our analysis thus claims that the low periphery is not a part of the narrow syntax (unlike the left periphery). The templatic nature of the low periphery explains why it is more restricted across languages and is prone to linguistic variation.

While the sentence-initial position in Chinese is generally related to givenness/definiteness, instances of informationally new or indefinite sentence-initial NPs may be found in language in use. This paper systematically explores the phenomenon of sentence-initial indefinites (SIIs), their statistical relevance, and the interaction with features typically connected to linear order, such as animacy or locatability. Results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis conducted on three major big-size, generalised corpora show that SIIs in Chinese are not only possible, but also statistically relevant. Animacy and locatability are found to play a key role in increasing SIIs acceptability. Finally, data reveal a new pattern featuring SIIs with proper nouns.