Journal of Chinese Linguistics最新文献

The universality and specificity of cross-linguistic reading have always been a topic of interest to researchers. The earliest controversies started with the issue of whether speech recoding is required for reading non-alphabetic scripts, for example, Chinese and Kanji, whether it is possible to directly access the semantic meaning of a word from orthography without speech recoding, and whether reading non-alphabetic scripts relies on the right rather than the left brain. The abatement of these controversies began with a series of experiments by Ovid Tzeng and William Wang which raised the possibility of universality across different languages. To study how humans read, two kinds of operation must be considered: the human cognitive system and the structure of language. In this paper, we will take the original controversy of non-alphabetic scripts being different from alphabetic scripts in the 1970s as the starting point, and use the current research results of cognitive neuroscience to explain what kind of consensus has been reached right now. In addition, we will use tone as an important feature in the study of Chinese reading, and describe the current research results on tone to highlight the special characteristics of Chinese. Finally, we will propose future research directions.

Taking into account data hitherto neglected, this article examines the progressive aspect zài 在 in Mandarin Chinese and related issues. We argue in favour of the constituency [ AspP zài 在 [V-zhe 着]] and demonstrate important syntactic and semantic differences between the progressive aspect zài 在 and the durative aspect -zhe 着 . Importantly, unlike ‘zài 在 V’, ‘V-zhe 着’ is only acceptable as the sole predicate in a root sentence when interpretable as a (derived) state. Otherwise, the presence of the progressive aspect zài 在 is required: ‘zài 在 V-zhe 着’. This crucial role of zài 在 is often obscured by its phonological fusion (haplology) with the preposition zài 在 ‘at’ heading an immediately following prepositional phrase: NP [ AspP zài 在 [ VP [ PP zài 在 NP] [V-zhe 着 NP]]] => NP ZÀI 在 NP V-zhe 着 NP. The presence/absence of an underlying progressive aspect zài 在 (having fused with the preposition zài 在) is reflected in the choice of negation. Since the progressive aspect zài 在 must be negated by méi 没, not bù 不, it follows that no underlying aspectual zài 在 is present when it is bù 不 that negates a VP with a zài 在 PP adjunct NP bù 不 [ VP [ PP zài 在 NP] VP]. By contrast, when there is an underlying aspectual zài 在, the negation méi 没 is required, resulting in the surface sequence ‘NP méi 没 ZÀI 在 NP VP’. Finally, given that a subset of auxiliaries, some stative verbs as well as state-denoting ‘V-zhe 着’ are negated by méi 没, negation of ‘zài 在 VP’ by méi 没 is compatible with the status of ‘zài 在 VP’ as a state, hence able to be true at a moment.

作为吴语西部地区的分支方言，江西上饶广丰话在表达无定语法意 义时与其他方言有很大不同：除了常见的“一量名”短语和省略数 词“一 形成的“量名”短语外，广丰话还可使用“个量名”短语。 从音系、句法和语义三个角度对“一量名”和“个量名”短语的观 察发现，虽然广丰话中的“一”和“个”还保留了数词“一”的解 读 但就语法性质而言 ，它们都基本上演化为 了不定冠词。从“个 量 名”的句法表现 可以推测，“个”的不定冠词用法是通用量词语 法化的结果，这与之前发现的“量名”短语在许多方言中表有定意 义、量词正逐渐演化为准定冠词的情况完全不同，可看作是对汉语 方言指称系统和量词语法研究的重要补充。“一量名”和“个量名” 短语目前在广丰话中处于两者共存，相互竞争的局面，这一情况应 该是广丰话同时受到上饶话和闽北、闽中地区方言影响的结果 。

The syntactic structure of the classifiers in Chinese has been assumed or argued to be left-branching, right-branching or mixed. This article examines three facts-number-classfier-de, the use of duo ‘extra, more’ and the conditional deletion of number––which are regarded by Xuping Li (2013) as evidence for the mixed structures. It is shown that the purported facts are partial and, when more related facts are taken into consideration, they together are equally compatible with an exclusively left-branching structure and thus cannot serve as support for a mixed structure analysis. Three kinds of arguments are reviewed in the last section which fare favorably with the left-branching structure.