- Recent projects
- o A unified account of causal clause sequences in Mandarin Chinese and its implications
- o Functional linguistics in 2007: a review;
- o Review of Discourse Modality in Chinese by Xu Jingning;
- o Zhanguo Lexical Devemopment and Applications;
- o The Laozi Web Project (with Hong Huaqing);
- o A Comparative Study of Chinese and English Causal Clause Sequences in Discourse
- o The Mandarin Disposal Constructions: Usage and Development
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Zhuo Jing-Schmidt (University of Cologne)
Hongyin Tao (UCLA)
ABSTRACT
The Mandarin Chinese disposal constructions involving ba and jiang have been considered synonyms that differ only in terms of register. This paper reexamines the status of ba versus jiang in the light of spoken and written corpus data and new insights that have arisen from recent hypotheses concerning the meaning of the ba-construction. We postulate a dynamic system of disposal in which ba and jiang share the basic meaning of disposal while contrasting in terms of subjectivity and emotionality. By treating meaning and broad discourse contexts (genres) as prototypically organized categories, which demonstrate conceptual and discourse principles, we are able to explain the precise distributional patterns of the two items across a variety of genres in two spoken and written language corpora. We conclude that dynamic language use gives rise to language change along the diachrony-synchrony continuum and beyond the simple speech and writing dichotomy. This study also shows that the symbiotic development of subjectification and objectification in the disposal system raises interesting questions for theories of grammaticalization.
(Accepted by Language and Linguistics.)
Zuoyan Song (Peking University)
Hongyin Tao (UCLA)
Abstract
Causal clauses introduced by _yinwei_ in Chinese can have either an initial position or a final position with regard to the main clause. While traditional grammars have treated the initial sequence as the default form, numerous discourse-based studies have shown just the opposite. However, few have attempted to explain why both sequence orders exist and why they have skewed distribution patterns across discourse registers. In this paper we use a telephone conversation corpus and a written Chinese corpus as data and provide a comprehensive analysis of the usage patterns. Our main findings are that final and initial causal clause sequences are ostensibly two different linguistic constructions, functioning as an interactional device and an information-sharing device, respectively. Quantitative distributional disparities are seen as a function of the discourse utilities of the linguistic devices in question and the communicative demands of different registers. From a cross-linguistic perspective, our findings raise questions about the ways in which universal and language-specific properties of clause sequencing can be better understood.
(Accepted by Studies in Language.)
Zuoyan Song (Peking University)
Hongyin Tao (UCLA)
Abstract
Using spoken and written corpora as data, this paper compares the uses of causal clauses introduced by the Chinese causal marker yinwei and by the English causal marker because ('cause) in discourse. Our data show that although final causal clause sequences are predominantly preferred in both languages and in both discourse modes, there are substantially more initial causal clauses in Chinese than in English. In addition, while the final causal clauses introduced by because in English generally emerge after a dispreferred response, the Chinese yinwei clause can follow a preferred response in conversation in addition to the dispreferred triggers. In the case of written texts, yinwei clauses not only occur in such contexts as negation, contrast and strong evaluation, as English because clauses do, they are also often trigged by constructions with modality and comparison. Our study thus raises interesting questions about both conversation strategies and linguistic universals.
(Acccepted by Hanyu Xuebao [Chinese Linguistics].)
Photo by Hongyin Tao
(c) 2008