Exclamation is constituted of sentence exclamations and exclamatives. Sentence exclamations in Late Archaic Chinese (LAC) are expressives asserting denoted propositions, parallel to their ...counterparts in modern Mandarin. Sentence exclamations in LAC also indicate that the asserted propositions fail to meet speakers’ expectations, yet such a sense of surprise is not obligatory. Another property of sentence exclamations in LAC is their compatibility with focus structures whose value is reflected in a degree property. As for exclamatives, although they exist in modern Mandarin, they do not exist in LAC. There are exclamatory constructions involving degree adverbials he and heqi, which, according to traditional analyses (Yang & He, 1992, pp. 899-900; Chu, 1994, p. 303), are exclamatives. Nevertheless, I suggest that exclamatory constructions involving he and heqi in LAC fail to pass the exclamativity tests (Zanuttini & Portner 2000, 2003; Badan & Cheng, 2015), disparate from their modern counterparts, so they should not be treated as true exclamatives.
This paper aims to introduce the language corpora and the advantages of their use in the process of Chinese language acquisition. We provide practical examples of the corpora's direct and indirect ...use for teaching and learning Chinese as a second language. The exploratory approach towards Chinese by using various types of corpora is applicable for general language seminars as well as specialized translation seminars. The indirect use is mainly linked to the preparation of teaching materials and facilitates the curriculum design.
Članek obravnava soglasnike standardne kitajščine z vidika govorca slovenskega jezika. Slovenščina ima 21 pomensko razločevalnih soglasnikov, kitajščina enega več. Ker se fonetične značilnosti ...soglasnikov med jezikoma razlikujejo, prispevek prouči možnosti, kako s slovenskimi glasovi predstaviti kitajske foneme, pri čemer upoštevamo tudi načelo gospodarnosti. V ta namen najprej podamo oris slovenskih in kitajskih soglasnikov, jih primerjamo s pomočjo mednarodne fonetične abecede, predlagamo ustreznice in predlagane rešitve strnemo v krajše navodilo, kako naj slovenski bralec izgovarja kitajske soglasnike.
Taiwan Mandarin, one of the more syllable-timed dialects of Mandarin, has fewer unstressed syllables than Standard Mandarin. Acoustic analyses show that the supposedly unstressed ...syllables—neutral-tone syllables—in Taiwan Mandarin behave differently from those of Standard Mandarin. Unlike Standard Mandarin, these syllables do not raise their pitch after Tone 3. They have a distinct static mid-low pitch target and the target is implemented with a stronger articulatory strength. Moreover, acoustic analyses demonstrate that not all of these “unstressed syllables” are unstressed. The phonetic evidence suggests that these neutral-tone syllables should be analyzed as unaccented rather than unstressed in Taiwan Mandarin. These unaccented syllables are only lexically marked, and their pitch is neutralized into a mid-low tone. This study sheds light on how rhythm can affect stress and accent in a lexical tone language.
In this paper, I explore causation in Classical Chinese during the Warring States period and in the Han Dynasty. Whether causation is realised via causative use of words with covert causative verbs, ...or via overt causative verbs, causation structures can always be divided into Agentive and Causative constructions, which can be further categorised into lexical causatives and productive causatives. I also account for causation in Classical Chinese by means of Feng’s (1998, 2000, 2009) prosodic approach and show that both strategies to form causation structures are compatible with a prosodic theory. I discuss both VO and VV causation and state that Agentive and Causative constructions involving covert causative (light) verbs are prosodic words, whereas those involving overt causative verbs exhibit properties of phrases.
V prispevku so na kratko osvetljene jezikovnopolitične usmeritve nekaterih za Slovenijo pomembnih mednarodnih organizacij, v nadaljevanju pa tudi položaj in vloga tujih jezikov v slovenskem šolskem ...sistemu tako v osnovni kot v srednji šoli. Kot zadnji tuji jezik je bila v predmetnik osnovne in srednje šole vpeljana kitajščina. V prispevku je podrobno opisano, kako je to vpeljevanje potekalo s strokovnega, organizacijskega in sistemskega vidika. Hkrati je podan tudi trenutni uvid v poučevanje kitajščine v slovenskem šolskem sistemu. Sistemsko umeščanje kitajščine je bil kompleksen in dolgotrajen proces, ki pa lahko predstavlja eno od izhodišč za razmislek o uvajanju japonščine.
In Slovene, sound shapes of Japanese and Chinese words undergoing the process of assimilation may be quite different from their origins, which in the end should not come as a surprise as it is so in ...many other languages. However, the fact that there are many cases with two slightly different Slovene pronunciations of the same Japanese or Chinese word, of which one is closer to the original sound shape than the other, calls for a more comprehensive investigation on the factors that contributed to such a result. This research pays attention to vowel sequences in Japanese and Chinese, and how they appear in Slovene as the so called visiting lexica. Though the two languages carry out vowel sequences in different ways, similarities can be found in the way Slovene detects and resolves their vowel hiatuses. Authors stress the importance of metrical aspects of the original sound shapes, which Latin script includes inconsistently or does not express at all. Phonological approach to vowel sequences solution to vowel hiatus and offers systematic guidelines on pronunciation of the Latin script. Besides, it may further bring some new insights into possible solution on conjugation and declination forms of Japanese and Chinese loanwords in Slovene.
The notional passive construction (NPC, henceforth) is claimed to be the most common form of passive and the earliest mode of passive expression in Chinese. However, under the view of cognitive ...construction grammar, NPC remains a mystery with its form not clearly defined and its function not particularly discussed. Taking a character-based historical approach, this paper studies the form designated by NPC, the ‘theme + verbal’ structure in corpus data. Results show that the ‘theme + verbal’ structure is extremely stable in the history of the Chinese language, denoting change of state. In conjunction with some cross-linguistic findings, a change-of-state construction can thereby be proposed for the form ‘theme + verbal’. Accordingly, the idea of the so-called “notional passive construction” is challenged in the way that it essentially refers to a special situation of the change-of-state construction when the event expressed by the verbal is not likely to occur spontaneously- it is not a construction itself, yet plausibly passive.
This paper discusses the evolution of the Chinese verb 断 (duàn ‘break’), exploring how the lexicon has transformed from being a substantive transitive verb in the past to the various functions it ...fulfils in contemporary Chinese: i.e. a resultative complement, an adjective, an adverb and a noun. Findings reveal that duàn was initially transitive and its intransitive function was derived during the Spring and Autumn period (772–476 BC). The two functions co-existed for the rest of the Pre-Qin period (before 221 BC). Duàn’s transition into a resultative complement began during the Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25–220), and its noun function was shaped in the Warring State period (475–221 BC). Finally, Duàn’s adjective and adverb functions are noted to begin in Middle Chinese (AD 420–1279). Although some of these transitions took place more or less simultaneously during overlapping periods, they developed via two separate paths: the process by which duàn developed into a resultative complement, an adverb, and an adjective is that of grammaticalization, while on the other hand, the process by which duàn developed into a noun is that of lexicalization. Essentially, it is the intransitive function that is subject to grammaticalization and it is the transitive function that is subject to lexicalization. In this paper it is therefore proposed that the above diachronic change is taken as a cline, and is put forward as follows: (a) grammaticalization and lexicalization are not distinct processes but rather happen to a lexeme more or less simultaneously; and (b) interrelationship between the two processes is orthogonal.
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