Chinese a Linguistic Introduction

Book in English. 2006



Contents

List of maps viii

List of tables ix

List of figures x

Preface xi

Major chronological divisions of Chinese history xiii

Major periods of the Chinese language xiv

Introduction 1

1 Historical background of the language 13

1.1 Prehistoric time 13

1.2 Oracle-bone and bronze scripts 14

1.3 Old Chinese (771 BCE to 220 CE) 15

1.4 Middle Chinese (220 CE to 960) 17

1.5 Early modern Chinese (960 to 1900) 18

1.6 Modern Chinese (1900 to present) 20

1.7 Modern Chinese grammar and its lexicon 23

1.8 Simplification of Chinese script 26

1.9 Formation of Chinese dialects 28

1.9.1 Northern Chinese (Mandarin) 29

1.9.2 Southern dialects 30

2 Phonetics of standard Chinese 34

2.1 Initials 35

2.2 Finals 36

2.2.1 Medials (on-glide) 37

2.2.2 Main vowels 37

2.2.3 Syllabic terminals (off-glide) 38

2.3 Rhotacization 38

2.4 Tones 39

2.5 Tone-sandhi 40

3 Chinese morphology 1 45

3.1 Compounding 49

3.2 Derivation-like affixes 56

3.2.1 Prefixes 56

3.2.2 Suffixes 58

3.2.3 Potential markers -de- and -bu- as infixes 60

3.3 Inflection-like affixes 64

3.3.1 Perfective marker -le 64

3.3.2 Experiential marker -guo 68

3.3.3 Imperfective marker -zhe 70

3.4 Summary 73

4 Chinese morphology 2 75

4.1 Clitics 75

4.1.1 Sentence-final particles 75

4.1.2 Locative particles 81

4.2 Reduplication 88

4.2.1 Classifiers 88

4.2.2 Informal kinship terms 89

4.2.3 Adjectives 90

4.2.4 Verbs 92

4.3 Beyond morphology 95

4.4 Summary 99

5 Chinese writing 101

5.1 Chinese characters 101

5.2 The history of Chinese script 103

5.3 The strokes of Chinese writing 107

5.4 Simplified standard script 110

6 Chinese language and culture 115

6.1 Cultural beliefs and Chinese expressions 116

6.1.1 Philosophical beliefs and Chinese expressions 116

6.1.2 Metaphors the Chinese live by 122

6.1.3 Politeness 126

6.2 Language contacts and borrowings 133

6.3 Neologisms and morpheme-syllable script 141

6.4 Summary 145

7 Chinese syntax 1 147

7.1 Linear order, lexical categories, subcategorization, and

semantic roles 148

7.2 Other lexical categories 153

7.3 Constituency 158

7.4 Selectional restrictions 164

7.5 Chinese pronouns and demonstratives 166

7.6 Negation 170

7.7 Sentence types 172

7.7.1 Interrogative 172

7.7.2 Imperative 181

8 Chinese syntax 2 184

8.1 Nominalization 186

8.2 Relative clauses 188

8.3 Cleft sentences 189

8.4 Adverbials 191

8.4.1 The word order and semantics of some common

Chinese adverbs 191

8.4.2 Adverbial clauses 197

8.5 Serial-verb constructions 200

8.5.1 Three types of serial-verb constructions 200

8.5.2 Causative construction 205

8.6 Prepositions 206

8.6.1 Flexible prepositional phrases 206

8.6.2 The comparative, passive, and b˘a constructions 209

8.6.2.1 Comparative 209

8.6.2.2 Passive 211

8.6.2.3 The b˘a construction 212

8.7 Summary 218

Appendix 1 Phonetic symbols 220

Appendix 2 Capitalized abbreviations 223

References 225

Index 229