This new interpretation of the early history of Chinese argues that Old Chinese was typologically a 'mixed' language. It shows that, though its dominant word order was subject-verb-object, this coexisted with subject-object-verb. Professor Xu demonstrates that Old Chinese was not the analytic language it has usually been assumed to be, and that it employed morphological and lexical devices as well as syntactic means. She describes the typological changes that have taken place sincethe Han period and shows how Chinese evolved into a more analytic language, supporting her exposition with abundant examples. She draws where possible on archaeological findings in order to distinguish between versions of texts transmitted and sometimes modified through the hands of generations ofcopyists.The author focusses on syntactic issues, including word order, verbs, causative structures, resultative compounds, and negation, but also pays close attention to what she demonstrates are closely related changes in phonology and the writing system.The book will interest scholars and graduate students of Chinese linguistics, philology, classical literature as well as general linguists interested in word-order typology and language universals. It may be also be used as a text for advanced courses in Classical Chinese and Chinese diachronic syntax.

Mandarin Chinese has become indispensable for crosslinguistic comparison and syntactic theorizing. It is nevertheless still difficult to obtain comprehensive answers to research questions, because Chinese is often presented as an "exotic" language defying the analytical tools standardly used for other languages. This book sets out to demystify Chinese. It places controversial issues in the context of current syntactic theories and offers precise analyses based on a large array of representative data. Although the focus is on Modern Mandarin, earlier stages of Chinese are occasionally referred to in order to highlight striking continuities in its history. VO order is one such constant factor, thus invalidating the idea that Chinese went through a major word order change from OV to VO and back to OV. Another claim often made for Chinese as an isolating language, viz. the existence of an impoverished inventory of parts of speech, is likewise refuted. Other long debated issues addressed here include the relevance of the dichotomy topic vs subject prominence and the role of Chinese as a recurring exception to crosscategorial harmonies posited in typological studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics offers a broad and comprehensive coverage of the entire field from a multi-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are contributed by leading scholars in their respective areas. This Handbook contains eight sections: history, languages and dialects, language contact, morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology, socio-cultural aspects and neuro-psychological aspects. It provides not only a diachronic view of how languages evolve, but also a synchronic view of how languages in contact enrich each other by borrowing new words, calquing loan translation and even developing new syntactic structures. It also accompanies traditional linguistic studies of grammar and phonology with empirical evidence from psychology and neurocognitive sciences. In addition to research on the Chinese language and its major dialect groups, this handbook covers studies on sign languages and non-Chinese languages, such as the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan.

This new major reference work provides a comprehensive overview of linguistic phenomena in a variety of Sinitic languages in a global context, highlighting the dynamic interaction between these languages and English. This “living reference work” offers a window into the linguistic sphere in China and beyond, and showcases the latest research into diverse and evolving linguistic phenomena that have resulted from intensified interactions between the Sinophone world and other lingua-spheres. The Handbook is divided into five sections. The chapters in Section I (New Research Trends in Chinese Linguistic Research) present fast-growing research areas in Chinese linguistics, particularly those undertaken by scholars based in China. Section II (Interactions of Sinitic Languages) focuses on language-contact situations inside and outside China. The chapters in Section III (Meaning, Culture, Translation) explore the meanings of key cultural concepts, and how ideas move between Chinese and English through translation across various genres. Section IV (New Trends in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) covers new ideas and practices relating to teaching the Chinese language and culture. The final section, Section V (Transference from Chinese to English), explores dynamic interactions between varieties of Chinese and varieties of English, as they play out in multilingual sites and settings

This volume provides general linguists with new data and analysis on languages spoken in China regarding various aspects of space and quantification, using different approaches. Contributions by researchers from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, the United States and Australia offer insights on aspects of language ranging from phonology and morphology to syntax and semantics, while the approaches vary from formal, historical, areal, typological, and cognitive linguistics to second language acquisition. After separate volumes on space and quantification in languages of China, the studies in this volume combine space and quantification to allow readers a view of the intersection of the two topics. Each article contributes to general linguistic knowledge while discussing a particular aspect of space or quantification in a particular language/dialect, offering new data and analysis from languages that are spoken in the same geographical area, and that belong to various language families that exist and evolve in close contact with one another.

This study investigates the distribution of linguistic and specifically structural diversity in Northeast Asia (NEA), defined as the region north of the Yellow River and east of the Yenisei. In particular, it analyzes what is called the grammar of questions (GQ), i.e., those aspects of any given language that are specialized for asking questions or regularly combine with these. The bulk of the study is a bottom-up description and comparison of GQs in the languages of NEA. The addition of the phrase and beyond to the title of this study serves two purposes. First, languages such as Turkish and Chuvash are included, despite the fact that they are spoken outside of NEA, since they have ties to (or even originated in) the region. Second, despite its focus on one area, the typology is intended to be applicable to other languages as well. Therefore, it makes extensive use of data from languages outside of NEA. The restriction to one category is necessary for reasons of space and clarity, and the process of zooming in on one region allows a higher resolution and historical accuracy than is usually the case in linguistic typology. The discussion mentions over 450 languages and dialects from NEA and beyond and gives about 900 glossed examples. The aim is to achieve both a cross-linguistically plausible typology and a maximal resolution of the linguistic diversity of Northeast Asia.