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Language Contact and Change in Chinese: 1 (Trends in Chinese Linguistics [TCL], 1) PDF

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Guangshun Cao, Hsiao-jung Yu (Eds.) Language Contact and Change in Chinese Trends in Chinese Linguistics Editors Alain Peyraube Guangshun Cao Thekla Wiebusch Volume 1 Language Contact and Change in Chinese Edited by Guangshun Cao, Hsiao-jung Yu ISBN 978-3-11-061006-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061298-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-061024-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934272 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH Berlin/Boston and the Commercial Press, Beijing, China Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck Cover image: RyanKing999 / iStock / Getty Images Plus www.degruyter.com Foreword From the 14th–13th century BCE until the present, Chinese has had more than five thousand years of written records. Historical documents indicate that China has been in contact with languages from other language families for over two thou- sand years. The earliest contact between Chinese and another language can be dated back to the first century BCE, when the Xiongnu people (the Huns) founded their empire on the grasslands of northern China. Throughout Chinese history, the Chinese have interacted with many other ethnic groups, and the Chinese lan- guage has been in contact with various languages belonging to other families. In this sense, the history of China may be seen as a history of the Chinese language in constant contact with other languages. From the 1980s on, a tremendous amount of research has been devoted to grammatical change in the Chinese language. Researchers have conducted syn- chronic studies on the linguistic structures of different dynastic periods, as well as diachronic studies on the development of those structures. These studies have enhanced our understanding of the process, mechanism and development of Chinese syntactic change. In the beginning of the 21st century, some researchers began to pay attention to the external mechanism at work in Chinese language development – language contact in the history of the Chinese language. Historically there are three major episodes of large scale language contact in China. The earliest one for which there are extant written documents dates from the Late Han Dynasty (circa 200 CE) to the Tang Dynasty (618–907), and involves the case of Buddhist texts translated into Chinese from Sanskrit (Pali/Prakrits). The second episode involves contact between Chinese speakers and those of various branches of Altaic languages including Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongolian, which took place from the Song Dynasty (960–1279) to the Yuan Dynasty (1279– 1368). The third episode is the contact between Chinese and Manchu speakers during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). When we look at the regions in which Chinese people reside or neighbor with minority groups in southwestern and/or northwestern China during the Modern Period, we can see that there has been continuous language contact between the Chinese and non-Chinese. There are features found in these languages compara- ble to certain phenomena observed in historical documents and texts. The abundance of extant Chinese written materials has allowed linguists to trace and study the emergence and development of these new contact-induced features, i.e., atypical linguistic elements in the Chinese language. Thus, the use of written documents to study the evolution of the new conduct-induced features is highly significant to understanding the impact/influence of language contact in the history of Chinese syntax. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110612981-201 VI   Foreword There are two axes by which we may observe the linguistic development of these contact-induced features in Chinese: a “horizontal”, differential axis and “vertical”, evolutionary axis. The former adopts a synchronic perspective which focuses on the atypical linguistic features that emerged in each dynastic period and the changes they triggered for the Chinese language of that particular period; the latter employs a diachronic perspective which analyses the impact of these changes on the development of the Chinese language. The key considerations in studying language contact and change in the history of the Chinese language include the emergence of atypical linguistic features, and the location and approximate time period or dynastic period in which these features appeared and were used. More importantly, these considerations include the process and mech- anisms involved in the development of these atypical features, and ultimately, their impact on the development of the Chinese language. The study of language contact and change in the history of the Chinese lan- guage has attracted more and more Chinese linguists’ and scholars’ attention. The articles collected in this volume were originally published as journal arti- cles by Shangwu Publishing House. They comprise studies of the three major language contact episodes in China, namely the language in translated Chinese Buddhist sutras and texts of the Medieval period, the ‘Yuan Dynasty colloquial language’ (Yuan baihua), and the Chinese language under the Manchus’ control during the Qing Dynasty. One article concerns the language contact study of lin- guistic features in certain Sinitic languages (or “Chinese dialects”) in the Modern Period. Some articles give special attention to a given period and discuss the lin- guistic changes triggered by language contact during that period, while others analyze the nature and features of the contacts of different periods and consider their impact on the historical development of the Chinese language. It is our hope that these articles may provide a general picture of the kinds of research done by Chinese linguists in the study of contact and change in the history of the Chinese language. Guangshun Cao and Hsiao-jung Yu 25-03-2017 Contents Foreword   V List of Abbreviations   IX Hsiao-jung Yu (遇笑容) Theory and fact – A study of the translated Buddhist scriptures of the Medieval Period from the perspective of language contact   1 Guanming Zhu (朱冠明) On the origin of the Chinese reflexive ziji from the perspective of the Medieval Chinese Buddhist scriptures   15 Chirui Hu (胡敕瑞) The origin and development of negative exclusive particles in the Chinese language   41 Changcai Zhao (赵长才) The postpositions suo 所 and bian 边 in translated Chinese Buddhist scriptures of the Medieval Period   75 Lansheng Jiang (江蓝生) Variant reduplication and four-character state adjectives in Yuan Zaju   96 Yonglong Yang (杨永龙) The correlation between the Chinese purpose construction “VP + qu (去, ‘go’)” and SOV languages   125 Shengli Zu (祖生利) On the Han’er Yanyu of the Yuan Dynasty   149 Guangshun Cao (曹广顺) and Dandan Chen (陈丹丹) A study of the special syntactic features in Yuan baihua   168 Dandan Chen (陈丹丹) On the special syntactic features in the vernacular imperial edicts of the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1424)   191 VIII   Contents Yunbing Li (李云兵) The influence of language contact on word order of some minority languages in Southern China   205 Guangshun Cao (曹广顺) and Hsiao-jung Yu (遇笑容) Second language acquisition and contact-induced language change in the history of the Chinese language   237 Postscript   254 Index   255 List of Abbreviations 1, 2, 3 1st, 2nd, 3rd person pronoun LOC locative case 1PL 1st personal pronoun plural m marker 2PL 2nd personal pronoun plural M masculine 3PL 3rd personal pronoun plural Madv manner adverb 1SG 1st personal pronoun singular MMW mimetic word 2SG 2nd personal pronoun singular MW measure word 3SG 3rd personal pronoun singular NEG negative ABL ablative NMZ nominalizer/nominalization ACC accusative NOM nominative case ADJ adjective OBJ object/objective case ADV adverb OW onomatopoetic word AFF affirmative PART particle AUX auxiliary PASS passive voice CAUS causative PERF perfect CL classifier POST postposition/postpositional case CONJ conjunction PREP preposition/prepositional phrase COP copular PRES present tense Dadv degree adverb PRO expletive pronoun DAT dative PROG progressive DECL declarative mood Q question marker DEM demonstrative QUOT quotative (quotative case or EXPER experiential quotative mood) FUT future tense REL relative(izer) GEN genitive SKT Sanskrit IMPERF imperfect St standard INSTR instrumental case TOP topic https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110612981-202

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