Prosodic Syntax in Chinese

Prosodic Syntax in Chinese
Author: Feng Shengli
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2019-04-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1351263269

In the two volumes of Prosodic Syntax in Chinese, the author develops a new model, which proposes that the interaction between syntax and prosody is bi-directional and that prosody not only constrains syntactic structures but also activates syntactic operations. All of the facts investigated in Chinese provide new perspectives for linguistic theories as well as insights into the nature of human languages. The subtitles of the two volumes are Theory and Facts and History and Change respectively, with each focusing on different topics (though each volume has both theoretical and historical descriptive concerns). This book has shown that prosody has played a crucial role in triggering the many changes in the diachronic development of Chinese. On the one hand, this book investigates the existence of SOV structures in Early Archaic Chinese, a SVO language, and then demonstrates the role of VO prosody in causing the disappearance of the remnant structures after the Han Dynasty. On the other hand, this book surveys the historical evidence for analyses of bei passives and Ba-constructions, and then offers a prosodic analysis on the origin of these two sentence patterns in Chinese. It is claimed that prosody can be an important factor in triggering, balancing and finally terminating changes in the syntactic evolution of Chinese.

Prosodic Syntax in Chinese

Prosodic Syntax in Chinese
Author: Feng Shengli
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2019-03-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1351263226

In the two volumes of Prosodic Syntax in Chinese, the author develops a new model, which proposes that the interaction between syntax and prosody is bi-directional and that prosody can not only constrains syntactic structures but also activates syntactic operations. All of the facts investigated in Chinese provide new perspectives for linguistic theories as well as the insights into the nature of human languages. The subtitles of the two volumes are Theory and Facts and History and Change respectively, with each focusing on different topics (though each volume has both theoretical and historical descriptive concerns). In this volume, the author first introduces the relevant theories and concepts of Metrical Phonology, Prosodic Phonology and Formal Syntax, and formulates the Government-based Nuclear Stress Rule in Chinese which can explain how and why Mandarin Chinese sentences are structured in a particular way. It is proposed that prosody can not only blocks the legitimate syntactic structures but also activates the potential syntactic operations. The former can be seen from the ungrammatical sentences that are caused by the inoperable NSR in these structures while the latter can be seen from sentences that are derived from syntactic movements which, however, are operable only when being motivated by prosody.

Prosodic Syntax in Chinese

Prosodic Syntax in Chinese
Author: FENG. SHENGLI
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2020-12-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367728991

In the two volumes of Prosodic Syntax in Chinese, the author develops a new model, which proposes that the interaction between syntax and prosody is bi-directional and that prosody can not only constrains syntactic structures but also activates syntactic operations. All of the facts investigated in Chinese provide new perspectives for linguistic theories as well as the insights into the nature of human languages. The subtitles of the two volumes are Theory and Facts and History and Change respectively, with each focusing on different topics (though each volume has both theoretical and historical descriptive concerns). In this volume, the author first introduces the relevant theories and concepts of Metrical Phonology, Prosodic Phonology and Formal Syntax, and formulates the Government-based Nuclear Stress Rule in Chinese which can explain how and why Mandarin Chinese sentences are structured in a particular way. It is proposed that prosody can not only blocks the legitimate syntactic structures but also activates the potential syntactic operations. The former can be seen from the ungrammatical sentences that are caused by the inoperable NSR in these structures while the latter can be seen from sentences that are derived from syntactic movements which, however, are operable only when being motivated by prosody.

Prosodic Morphology in Mandarin Chinese

Prosodic Morphology in Mandarin Chinese
Author: Shengli Feng
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2017-12-14
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1315392763

It is not entirely clear if modern Chinese is a monosyllabic or disyllabic language. Although a disyllabic prosodic unit of some sort has long been considered by many to be at play in Chinese grammar, the intuition is not always rigidly fleshed out theoretically in the area of Chinese morphology. In this book, Shengli Feng applies the theoretical model of prosodic morphology to Chinese morphology to provide the theoretical clarity regarding how and why Mandarin Chinese words are structured in a particular way. All of the facts generated by the system of prosodic morphology in Chinese provide new perspectives for linguistic theory, as well as insights for teaching Chinese and studying of Chinese poetic prosody.

Syntax-Phonology Interface

Syntax-Phonology Interface
Author: Hongming Zhang
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2016-11-25
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1351776193

This book centers on theoretical issues of phonology-syntax interface based on tone sandhi in Chinese dialects. It uses patterns in tone sandhi to study how speech should be divided into domains of various sizes or levels. Tone sandhi refers to tonal changes that occur to a sequence of adjacent syllables or words. The size of this sequence (or the domain) is determined by various factors, in particular the syntactic structure of the words and the original tones of the words. Chinese dialects offer a rich body of data on tone sandhi, and hence great evidence for examining the phonology-syntax interface, and for examining the resulting levels of domains (the prosodic hierarchy). Syntax-Phonology Interface: Argumentation from Tone Sandhi in Chinese Dialects is an extremely valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the fields of linguistics and Chinese.

Prosodic Morphology of Mandarin Chinese

Prosodic Morphology of Mandarin Chinese
Author: Shengli Feng
Publisher:
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2018
Genre: Chinese language
ISBN: 9781315392752

It is not entirely clear if modern Chinese is a monosyllabic or disyllabic language. Although a disyllabic prosodic unit of some sort has long been considered by many to be at play in Chinese grammar, the intuition is not always rigidly fleshed out theoretically in the area of Chinese morphology. In this book, Shengli Feng applies the theoretical model of prosodic morphology to Chinese morphology to provide the theoretical clarity regarding how and why Mandarin Chinese words are structured in a particular way. All of the facts generated by the system of prosodic morphology in Chinese provide new perspectives for linguistic theory, as well as insights for teaching Chinese and studying of Chinese poetic prosody.

Units in Mandarin Conversation

Units in Mandarin Conversation
Author: Hongyin Tao
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027226156

Hongyin Tao provides a new way of studying grammar based on the prosodic or intonation unit in spontaneous speech, rather than focusing on the unit of the artificially constructed sentence. Some notions developed from sentence-level data often do not account well for speech data. Contrary to the notion that the basic syntactic structure of a sentence comprises of both an NP and a VP, the author shows that a Mandarin sentence in spoken discourse can consist of a lone NP or a transitive verbal expression without any explicit argument (not anaphora). The author proposes the speech unit as one with which the grammar of Mandarin can better be understood. The book is of interest to scholars of discourse analysis, syntax, prosody, typology as well as of the Mandarin language.