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Effects of Constituent Orders on Functional Extension Patterns of the Verbs for Give: A Contrastive Study of Thai and Mandarin Chinese
Abstract
It is generally known that Thai and Mandarin Chinese are typologically different in that Thai has the head-modifier constituent order whereas Mandarin Chinese has the modifier-head one. This paper aims to investigate how different constituent orders of the head vis-a-vis the modifier and vis-a-vis the complement in Thai and Mandarin Chinese bear on patterns of functional extension of the verbs meaning give in the two languages, namely, hy in Thai and gi in Mandarin Chinese. Some observations can be made regarding the functional extension patterns of hy and gi as follows: (a) the clause connector use is possible for hy but lacking for gi; (b) the passive-marking use is possible for gi but lacking for hy; (c) the gi-marked dative PP can occur both preverbally and postverbally, whereas the hy-marked one can occur only postverbally; (d) only the preverbal gi-marked dative PPs are attested in a Beijing Mandarin speech corpus; (e) the gi- marked benefactive PP can occur only preverbally; (f) the structural schemas of the causative and the passive gi are identical; and (g) the causative use of hy is productive but that of gi is not. It is argued that the head-modifier order in Thai seems to correspond with postverbal functionally extended morphemes prevalent in the language. On the other hand, the modifier-head order in Mandarin Chinese seems to correspond with preverbal functionally extended ones prevalent in the language.
... Finally, it is noteworthy that the notion of A-D alignment is important not only in lexical semantics, but also in the study of other phenomena in Chinese linguistics. For instance, Thepkanjana and Uehara (2015) also apply Langacker's notion of A-D alignment in their contrastive analysis of gei and its translation equivalent in Thai. Their application of CG to the functional description of equivalent constructions is in line with what I have proposed here. ...
The present study addresses the rate of conceptual autonomy and dependence in Chinese lexical semantic analysis, presenting an analysis of how image-schema, domains and co-text interact in the [v]–[shang] construction as an example. Following a Principled Polysemy methodology, I identify the semantic prototype and four metaphorical senses of the construction. I also show the co-textual characteristics associated with each sense, which opens up further discussion of how image-schema and conceptual domains collaborate to produce the various senses. Based on these findings, I further establish a hierarchy of influence from co-text, where the semantics of an RVC depends first of all on its collocating verb and secondarily on a collocating noun phrase. This paper aims to show in some detail how image-schema, conceptual domains and patterns of co-text co-contribute to the polysemy of RVCs. It moreover proposes a novel way of analyzing Chinese lexical semantics in terms of conceptual autonomy and dependence.
This book is an introduction to syntactic theory and analysis which can be used for both introductory and advanced courses in theoretical syntax. Offering an alternative to the standard generative view of the subject, it deals with the major issues in syntax with which all theories are concerned. It presents syntactic phenomena from a wide range of languages and introduces students to the major typological issues that syntactic theories must address. A generous number of exercises is included, which provide practice with the concepts introduced in the text and in addition expose the student to in-depth analysis of data from many languages. Each chapter contains suggestions for further reading which encompass work from many theoretical perspectives. A separate teaching guide is available.
This article examines the ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses in crosslinguistic perspective. Using a representative sample of forty languages, the author shows that the ordering of main and adverbial clauses correlates with the position of the subordinator in the subordinate clause. In languages in which adverbial clauses have a final subordinator, adverbial clauses tend to precede the main clause, whereas in languages in which adverbial clauses are marked by an initial subordinator, adverbial clauses commonly occur in both sentence-initial and sentence-final position. In the latter language type, the position of an adverbial clause varies with its meaning or function: conditional clauses precede the main clause more often than temporal clauses, which in turn are more often preposed than causal, result, and purpose clauses. The distributional patterns are explained in terms of competing motivations; it is suggested that they arise from the interaction between structural and discourse-pragmatic factors.* Since Greenberg's seminal work on word-order correlations it has been well known that the order of certain linguistic elements tends to correlate with the order of verb and object. For instance, in languages in which the object precedes the verb (henceforth OV languages), adpositions usually follow NP and genitives occur before the head noun, whereas in languages in which the object follows the verb (henceforth VO languages), adpositions tend to precede NP and genitives occur after the head noun. This article examines the positional patterns of adverbial clauses, which have been largely ignored in the literature on word-order correlations.1 This is the first large-scale, crosslinguistic
Benefactives are constructions used to express that a state of affairs holds to someone’s advantage. The same construction sometimes also serves as a malefactive, whose meanings are generally not a simple mirror image of the benefactive. Benefactive constructions cover a wide range of phenomena: malefactive passives, general and specialized benefactive cases and adpositions, serial verb constructions and converbal constructions (including e.g. verbs of giving and taking), benefactive applicatives, and other morphosyntactic strategies. The present book is the first collection of its kind to be published on this topic. It includes both typological surveys and in-depth descriptive studies, exploring both the morphosyntactic properties and the semantic nuances of phenomena ranging from the familiar English double-object construction and the Japanese adversative passive to comparable phenomena found in lesser-known languages of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The book will appeal to typologists and linguists interested in linguistic diversity and it will also be a useful reference work for linguists working on language description.
The verbs meaning ‘to acquire’ are known to be highly polyfunctional words in Southeast Asian languages. They have many syntactic functions and many grammatical meanings. One of the important grammatical meanings expressed by the verbs meaning ‘to acquire’ across languages is modality. This study aims to investigate the grammaticalization of the verb ‘to acquire’ in Vietnamese, namely, được, into a grammatical marker of many types of modality. It is found that được can indicate three types of modality, i.e. ability/capacity modality, circumstantial possibility, and permission. It has not developed into a fullfledged epistemic modal yet. It is argued that the grammaticalization of được into different types of modality is primarily driven by metonymic processes.
This study fills a gap in the literature on the polyfunctional nature of the Chinese ditransitive verb gěi ‘to give’, which has undergone semantic and functional extensions. Our approach differs from previous studies by focusing on a narrowly defined location in time and space, i.e. contemporary Beijing oral language, and by basing our linguistic analysis on data obtained through the systematic sampling of a corpus of spontaneous casual discourse. Based on the existing literature we produce a taxonomy of five extended functions and structures 1) causative verb, 2) passive marker, 3) benefactive/malefactive/dative marker, 4) disposal marker and 5) ditransitive suffix. Of these, the first four share the common linear structure [NP1 gěi NP2 V]. Applying this taxonomy to our data we identified the relative productivity of each of these functions and created a synchronic constructional network of gěi, revealing its complex network of connections.
Largely following the order in which the lectures were given in the
graduate class on climate dynamics at the University of Colorado, the
book starts with the topic of moist convection in the tropics.
Summarizing decades-long research into a succinct article, Moncrieff
[this volume] reviews the state of the art of understanding of organized
precipitating convective systems with an eye to improving the
representation of such systems in global weather and climate models.
Moncrieff also addresses in this chapter the multi-scale convective
organization in the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a major source of
intraseasonal variability in the tropics. The second chapter proceeds to
a prominent phenomenon on the seasonal time scale: monsoons. In covering
this topic, Li [this volume] focuses his analysis on the Asian monsoon
and dissects the physical processes that are responsible for its
intraseasonal and interannual variability. All three subcomponents of
the Asian monsoon are covered here: the Indian monsoon, the East Asian
monsoon, and the Western North Pacific monsoon.
This reference grammar provides, for the first time, a description of the grammar of "Mandarin Chinese", the official spoken language of China and Taiwan, in functional terms, focusing on the role and meanings of word-level and sentence-level structures in actual conversations.
Thai is known for exhibiting complex constructions with series of so-called verbs. GIVE-complex constructions are one of those that have been studied widely and repeatedly. This paper aims at investigating the syntax and semantics of GIVE-complex constructions in Thai. The study is based on the framework of Role and Reference Grammar. It has found that in terms of semantics, hây 'give' has many meanings. As a main verb in a complex construction, it has semantic restrictions on its subject and shared argument while such restrictions are not held when they occur in some types of constructions. This property is used as one of the criteria for identifying the category of hây. The paper claims that some types of hây are not a verb, but rather a clause linkage marker. Schematic representation of its meaning is proposed to account for its semantic similarities. In terms of syntax, the paper proposes tests for differentiating types of juncture and nexus of the construction. It is found that GIVE-complex constructions in Thai can be analyzed as core coordination, core subordination, and clausal cosubordination.
It is common knowledge that the words corresponding to GIVE in serializing languages like hây and gěi in Thai and Mandarin Chinese, respectively, have multiple uses. Owing to the similarities as well as the differences in the synchronic usage and the diachronic development toward grammaticalization exhibited by the same words, they will be examined comparatively in this study, whose objectives are twofold: (i) to identify the similarities and differences in the usage between hây and gěi at the present time and (ii) to argue that these multiple meanings of hây and gěi are related, i.e. they are cases of polysemy. It has been brought to light that hây in Thai has a number of uses like: (1) a main verb use to indicate an action of possession transfer, (2) a dative use, (3) a benefactive use, (4) a causative use, (5) a malefactive use, and (6) a connective use in purposive, jussive, and complementation constructions. Its Mandarin Chinese equivalent gěi too has a range of uses like: (1) a main verb use, (2) a dative use, (3) a benefactive use, (4) a causative use, (5) a passive use, and (6) a ditransitive use. As is typical of serializing languages, these different, multifarious uses of hây and gěi arguably constitute cases of polysemy. It has also been discovered that the metonymic process, which involves pragmatic inferencing, plays a primary role in semantically extending the meaning of GIVE in both the languages.
Chinese is spoken by more people than any other language in the world, and has a rich social, cultural and historical background. This 2006 book is a comprehensive guide to the linguistic structure of Chinese, providing an accessible introduction to each of the key areas. It describes the fundamentals of its writing system, its pronunciation and tonal sound system, its morphology (how words are structured), and its syntax (how sentences are formed)-as well as its historical development, and the diverse ways in which it interacts with other languages. Setting the discussion of all aspects of Chinese firmly within the context of the language in use, Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction will be of great benefit to learners wishing to extend their knowledge and competence in the language, and their teachers. It will also be a useful starting point for students of linguistics beginning work on the structure of this major world language.
Give' constructions in Thai and beyond: a cognitive and grammaticalization perspective
- Shoichi Iwasaki
- Foong Ha
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Iwasaki, Shoichi, & Foong Ha Yap. 2000. 'Give' constructions in Thai and beyond: a cognitive
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Studies, ed. by Somsonge Bususphat, 371-382. Salaya: Mahidol University.
A Reference Grammar of Thai
- Shoichi Iwasaki
- Preeya Ingkaphirom
Iwasaki, Shoichi, & Preeya Ingkaphirom. 2005. A Reference Grammar of Thai. Cambridge & New
York: Cambridge University Press.
From causative to passive: a passage in some East and Southeast Asian languages. Cognitive Linguistics and Non-Indo-European Languages
- Foong Yap
- Shoichi Ha
- Iwasaki
Yap, Foong Ha, & Shoichi Iwasaki. 2003. From causative to passive: a passage in some East and
Southeast Asian languages. Cognitive Linguistics and Non-Indo-European Languages, ed. by
Eugene H. Casad & Gary B. Palmer, 419–445. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
A Discourse Grammar of Mandarin Chinese
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Chu, Chauncey C. 1998. A Discourse Grammar of Mandarin Chinese. New York: Peter Lang.
Department of Linguistics Faculty of Arts Chulalongkorn University Phayathai Road Bangkok 10330, Thailand Kingkarn.T@chula.ac.th Satoshi Uehara Graduate School of International Cultural Studies Tohoku University 14 Kawauchi
- Kingkarn Thepkanjana
Kingkarn Thepkanjana (corresponding author)
Department of Linguistics
Faculty of Arts
Chulalongkorn University
Phayathai Road
Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Kingkarn.T@chula.ac.th
Satoshi Uehara
Graduate School of International Cultural Studies
Tohoku University
14 Kawauchi, Aoba-ku
Sendai 980-8576, Japan
uehara@intcul.tohoku.ac.jp
- Ronald W Langacker
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. 1: Theoretical Perspectives.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.