The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

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The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

Edited by

C.-T. James Huang, Y.-H. Audrey Li, and Andrew Simpson

This edition first published 2014© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The handbook of Chinese linguistics / C.-T. James Huang, Y.-H. Audrey Li, Andrew Simpson. pages cm. – (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics) Includes index. ISBN 978-0-470-65534-4 (hardback) 1. Chinese language–Handbooks, manuals, etc. PL1071.H39 2014 495.1–dc23 2013038492

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Cover image: © Artellia / Dreamstime.comCover design by Workhaus

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1 2014

Contents

List of Figures viiList of Tables ixNotes on Contributors xForeword xiv

Part I Syntax, Semantics, and Morphology 1

1 Morphology 3Wei-Wen Roger Liao

2 Classifiers 26Francesca del Gobbo

3 Adverbial Adjuncts in Mandarin Chinese 49Thomas Ernst

4 Light Verbs 73T.-H. Jonah Lin

5 Topic and Focus 100Shu-Ing Shyu

6 Aspect 126Hooi Ling Soh

7 Sentence-Final Particles 156Andrew Simpson

8 Wh-Expressions in Mandarin Chinese 180Jo-Wang Lin

9 Quantification and Scope 208Yen-Hui Audrey Li

10 The Syntactic Structure of Noun Phrases 248Lisa L.-S. Cheng and Rint Sybesma

11 Ellipsis 275Yen-Hui Audrey Li and Ting-Chi Wei

12 Causal VVs in Mandarin 311Alexander Williams

13 Comparatives 342Chen-Sheng Luther Liu

vi Contents

Part II Phonetics, Phonology, and Prosody 367

14 Chinese Phonetics 369Wai-Sum Lee and Eric Zee

15 Segmental Phonology 400Yen-Hwei Lin

16 Syllable Structure and Stress 422San Duanmu

17 Tones, Tonal Phonology, and Tone Sandhi 443Jie Zhang

18 Prosody and Syntax 465Andrew Simpson

Part III Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics 493

19 Bilingual and Multilingual Acquisition of Chinese 495Stephen Matthews and Virginia Yip

20 Neurocognitive Approaches to the Processing of Chinese 511Ping Li, Hua Shu, and Youyi Liu

Part IV Historical Linguistics 535

21 Historical Syntax of Chinese 537Shengli Feng

22 Historical Phonology of Chinese 576Zev Handel

Part V Morpho-Syntax of Other Non-Mandarin Varieties of Chinese 599

23 Aspects of Cantonese Grammar 601Sze-Wing Tang and Siu-Pong Cheng

24 Taiwanese Hokkien/Southern Min 629Miao-Ling Hsieh

Index 657

List of Figures

14.1(a–d) Superimposed F0 contours on the bisyllabic compound words in Beijing Mandarin with the final syllable in the neutral tone ([0]) and one of the citation tones [55 35 214 51] on the initial syllable (male speaker). 376

14.2(a–d) Superimposed F0 contours on the trisyllabic compound words in Beijing Mandarin with the final syllable in the neutral tone ([0]) and one of the citation tones [55 35 214 51] on the initial and second syllable (male speaker). 377

14.3(a–d) Superimposed F0 contours on the trisyllabic compound words in Beijing Mandarin with the second syllable in the neutral tone ([0]) and one of the citation tones [55 35 214 51] on the initial and final syllable (male speaker). 378

14.4 Formant trajectories of the monosyllabic word [ɚ35] “child” 儿; Section (a) = [ə], Section (b) = [ə]-to-[ɚ] transition, and Section (c) = [ɚ] (female speaker). 381

14.5(a–g) Formant frequency trajectories of the [ɚ]-suffixed vowels [i-ɚ], [y-ɚ], [ɿ-ɚ], , [a-ɚ], [u-ɚ], and [ɤ-ɚ] (female speaker). 382

14.6(a–g) Formant frequency trajectories of the plain vowels [i], [y], [ɿ], , [a], [u], and [ɤ] (female speaker). 383

14.7(a–g) EMMA data on the tongue shapes and tongue positions at the temporal points of approximately 10%, 50%, and 90% of the total duration of the vowels with [ɚ]-suffixation (female speaker facing to the left). 384

14.8(a–g) EMMA data on the tongue shapes and tongue positions at the temporal points of approximately 10%, 50%, and 90% of the total duration of the plain vowels (female speaker facing to the left). 385

14.9(a–b) (i) EMMA data on tongue shapes and tongue positions for the Beijing Mandarin apical vowels [ɿ] and (in dark thin line) of the syllables [sɿ˥] “silk” and “teacher” and the syllables [tsɿ˥] “capital” and “juice”; (ii) tongue shapes and tongue positions for the Beijing Mandarin dorsal vowels

viii List of Figures

[i a u] (in light thin line); and (iii) palate contour (in dark thick line) (female speaker facing to the left). 390

14.10 Schematized spectrographic assemblies of the vowel [i] of [i˥] “clothes” and apical vowels [ɿ] of [sɿ˥] “silk” and [tsɿ˥] “capital” and of “teacher” and “juice” in Beijing Mandarin (female speaker). 391

14.11(a–e) Palatograms (upper) and linguograms (lower) of [cʰ] of [cʰɔ] “tomato,” [ɲ] of [ɲau] “urine,” [ɲ] of [ɲi] “ear,” [ç] of [çɔ] “boot,” and [ç] of [çi] “to hope” in Meixian Kejia (male speaker). 393

14.12(a–e) Palatograms (upper) and linguograms (lower) of [s] of [sɿ˥] “silk,” [ʂ] of “teacher,” [ts] of [tsɿ˥] “capital,” [tʂ] of “juice,” and [ɹ] of “the Sun” in Beijing Mandarin (female speaker). 395

20.1 Selected brain regions showing significant activation differences between familiar (Chinese/English) and unfamiliar (Italian/Japanese) stimulus conditions in the language discrimination task. Activation maps and time course results indicate that (a) unfamiliar languages elicited stronger activations than familiar languages in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; number indicating coordinates) in the left hemisphere (the side marked with L), while (b) familiar languages elicited stronger activations than unfamiliar languages in the left inferior temporal gyrus (ITG). Error bars indicate standard errors of the mean. 518

20.2 Surface 3D images display brain regions that responded more strongly in the noun and verb conditions as compared with the baseline condition, for Chinese (a) and English (b), respectively. No significant differences were found between the Chinese and English in the activation patterns for nouns and verbs. 521

20.3 Mean number of nouns, verbs, and adjectives learned by a connectionist model at different lexical development stages for (a) Chinese, and (b) English. Results are averaged across ten simulations. 523

20.4 Grand average ERPs across nine electrodes under the three experimental conditions: congruous sentences (dark solid line), sentences that contain semantic violations (dashed line) and sentences that contain both semantic and syntactic violations (light solid line). 526

22.1 Traditional view of the Chinese language family. 57822.2 Excerpt from the beginning of Guǎngyùn. 58122.3 The first table of Yùnjìng. 583

List of Tables

1.1 Headedness properties of compounds of phrases. 15

5.1 Summary of Paul and Whitman’s (2008) and Lee’s (2005) classifications of shi . . . (de). 111

14.1 The tonal contexts in which the neutral tone turns into one of the seven variant tone contours: high falling, mid falling, low falling, high level, high-mid level, mid level, and low level. 379

14.2 Changes in the rhymes as a result of [ɚ]-suffixation in Beijing Mandarin. 387

21.1 Relative chronology of bei passives in Classical Chinese. 552

22.1 Examples of reading pronunciations of three distinct Middle Chinese initials in selected modern dialects. 584

22.2 Li Fang-Kuei’s revision of Bernhard Karlgren’s Middle Chinese reconstruction. 588

22.3 Baxter’s “typeable transcription” of Middle Chinese. 590

Notes on Contributors

Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng is Chair Professor of Linguistics at Leiden University. Her research interests include comparative syntax (both micro- and macro- comparisons), syntax–semantics interface, and syntax–phonology interface. Some recent research topics include verb doubling, free choice items, and prosodic domains.

Siu-Pong Cheng is Research Assistant at T.T. Ng Chinese Language Research Centre of the Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests focus on Cantonese discontinuous constructions, the carto-graphic approach, and empty categories.

San Duanmu is Professor of Linguistics, University of Michigan. He is a phonolo-gist and the author of The Phonology of Standard Chinese (2nd edition, Oxford 2007) and Syllable Structure: The Limits of Variation (Oxford 2008). Currently, he is working on the book Sounds and Features, to be published by Oxford.

Thomas Ernst is a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, and has research interests in adverbs, Chinese syntax, and phrase structure theory. He has published in such journals as Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Language, and the Journal of East Asian Linguistics.

Shengli Feng is Professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include prosodic syntax, historical Chinese syntax, Chinese exegesis, and Chinese poetic prosody.

Francesca del Gobbo is a Junior Specialist in Linguistics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on Chinese linguistics, specifically on the interface between syntax and semantics. She has been working on relative clauses, the DP-structure, focus and topic, sentence-final particles, secondary predication, as well as the acquisition of appositive relative clauses.

Notes on Contributors xi

Zev Handel is Associate Professor of Chinese Linguistics at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research interests include historical Chinese phonology and dialectology, comparative Sino-Tibetan linguistics, and the history of Asian writing systems.

Miao-Ling Hsieh is Associate Professor at National Taiwan Normal University. Her research interests include negation, questions, noun phrases, Taiwanese Southern Min, and language acquisition.

C.-T. James Huang is Professor of Linguistics at Harvard University. His research focuses on syntactic theory, the syntax–semantics interface, and parametric theory. He has published in Language, Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language Semantics, is author/co-author of Between Syntax and Semantics (Routledge, 2009) and The Syntax of Chinese (Cambridge, 2009), and is founding co-editor of the Journal of East Asian Linguistics.

Wai-Sum Lee is Associate Professor of Phonetics at City University of Hong Kong. Her primary research interest is the phonetics of Chinese dialects. She is an edito-rial board member for the Chinese Journal of Phonetics and the editor of the Proceedings of ICPhS-17. She is also a council member of the IPA.

Ping Li is Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, and Information Sciences and Technology, and Co-Director of the Center for Brain, Behavior, and Cognition at the Pennsylvania State University. He is editor of the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. His research focuses on language acquisition, bilingualism, and cognitive neuroscience.

Yen-Hui Audrey Li is Professor of Linguistics and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include syntactic theory, typology, the interface of syntax with semantics, and phonology. She has published in Language, Linguistic Inquiry, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, and has (co-)authored books for Kluwer/Springer, MIT Press, and Cambridge University Press.

Wei-Wen Roger Liao holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from University of Southern California, and is currently Assistant Research Fellow at the Institute of Linguistics of Academia Sinica. His research focuses on a range of topics related to generative syntax, comparative syntax, and morpho-syntax, including classifiers, indefinites, Chinese aspects, and compounding.

Jo-Wang Lin is Professor of Linguistics at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. His main interests are semantics and the syntax–semantics interface. He has published papers in journals such as Journal of East Asian Linguistics, Journal of Semantics, Linguistic Inquiry, Linguistics, Linguistics and Philosophy, Natural Language Semantics, and Phonology.

xii Notes on Contributors

Tzong-Hong Jonah Lin is Associate Professor at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. His research interests include grammatical theory, Chinese linguistics, comparative East Asian syntax, and Siraya grammar.

Yen-Hwei Lin is Professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University. Her research interests include segmental phonology, syllable structure, phonetically-based pho-nology, and loanword phonology. She is author of The Sounds of Chinese and has published in Phonology, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, and Language.

Chen-Sheng Luther Liu is currently Professor at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. His research focuses on a range of topics in the syntax and semantics of Chinese, including anaphora, adjectives, and comparatives. He has published in the Journal of East Asian Linguistics and Lingua.

Youyi Liu is Assistant Professor of Psychology, at the faculty of State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University. His research focuses on language processing (L1/L2), reading development, and dyslexia.

Stephen Matthews is Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include language typology, language contact, and bilingualism. He has published on the grammar of Cantonese and other dialects, on contact languages including Chinese Pidgin English, and on bilingual development.

Hua Shu is Professor of State Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University, China. Her research interests include Chinese lan-guage processing, reading acquisition, dyslexia and the underlying neural bases. She has published papers in journals such as Human Brain Mapping, Neuroimage, Child Development, Journal of Educational Psychology, and JCPP.

Shu-Ing Shyu is currently Associate Professor at the National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung. Her main research interests are in syntax and interface studies of Mandarin focus and topic. She has published papers in journals such as Linguistics, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, and Language and Linguistics.

Andrew Simpson is Professor of Linguistics and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on the comparative syntax of East, Southeast, and South Asian languages. He is joint general editor of the Journal of East Asian Linguistics.

Hooi Ling Soh is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Minnesota. Her recent research focuses on how aspectual information is represented and inter-preted in the mind of the speaker. She has published in Natural Language and

Notes on Contributors xiii

Linguistic Theory, Linguistic Inquiry, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, and Oceanic Linguistics.

Rint Sybesma is Professor of Chinese Linguistics at Leiden University (the Netherlands). His main interest is in Sinitic comparative syntax. He is currently the managing editor of the Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics (Brill).

Sze-Wing Tang is Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Director of T.T. Ng Chinese Language Research Centre of the Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and chief editor of Studies in Chinese Linguistics.

Ting-Chi Wei is currently Associate Professor at the National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan. His research interests focus on syntactic issues in regard to ellipsis, pro-drop, word order, and interrogatives in Mandarin Chinese and Formosan languages.

Alexander Williams is Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park. He works mainly on verbal semantics and its relation to clausal syntax, particularly in languages of the isolating type.

Virginia Yip is Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages and Director of the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include bilingual-ism, second language acquisition, cognitive science, and Cantonese Grammar. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition and Second Language Research.

Eric Zee is Professor of Phonetics at City University of Hong Kong. His research interest is in phonetics and typology of the sounds of Chinese dialects. He is an editorial board member for Phonetica and the Journal of the IPA and a member of the Council of the IPA.

Jie Zhang is Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Kansas. His research uses experimental methods to investigate the speakers’ knowledge of phonological patterns, in particular tone patterns in Chinese lan-guages. He has published in Phonology, Lingua, Phonetica, and Journal of East Asian Linguistics.

Foreword

The study of Chinese linguistics in formal, generative perspectives is a field that has become particularly well-established over the last 35 years, attracting ever larger numbers of researchers worldwide, as interest in both Chinese and theoreti-cal approaches to language continue to grow rapidly. For some time there has been a pressing demand for an overview volume on core areas of Chinese linguistics which will provide readers with an efficient, balanced, and accessible introduction to some of the most important results of research into Chinese carried out by theoretical linguists since the 1980s. The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics sets out to address this demand, with a set of 24 chapters presenting readers with critical overviews of a broad range of major topics in the formal study of Chinese linguistics. Each chapter describes and assesses the major achievements and controversies of research work relating to the particular topic of the chapter, and provides readers with references for further reading.

The volume is divided into five parts. The first 13 chapters are contributions on the syntax, semantics, and morphology of Chinese, covering topics relating to functional-grammatical elements such as classifiers, aspectual markers, sen-tence-final particles, and light verbs; also processes of interpretation in questions, quantificational and comparative structures and contexts of ellipsis, and the syntactic structuring of topic, focus, adverbial, and nominal elements. Two rather well-known phenomena in Chinese syntax, the ba (disposal) and bei (passive) constructions, were deliberately not included in the volume for the reason that good overviews of the properties of these constructions are already available elsewhere (e.g., in The Syntax of Chinese by Huang et al. Cambridge, 2009). The second section of the volume continues with five chapters on the phonetics and phonology of different varieties of Chinese, with specific contributions on seg-mental phonology, syllable structure and stress, tonal and tone sandhi systems, and the interaction of aspects of prosody with syntactic structure in Chinese. Part III focuses on issues of acquisition and psycholinguistics, with chapters on the bilingual and multilingual acquisition of Chinese, and on neurocognitive approaches to the processing of Chinese. Part IV then turns to the diachronic study of Chinese, with studies of both historical syntax and phonology. Finally, Part V

Foreword xv

closes the volume with two chapters devoted to aspects of morpho-syntax in non-Mandarin varieties of Chinese – Cantonese and Taiwanese Southern Min.

With its extensive coverage of topics in formal Chinese linguistics, the Handbook of Chinese Linguistics allows for use as a primary reader for structured, taught courses on Chinese linguistics at the university level, and for individual study by graduate students and other professional linguists who either focus their research directly on Chinese or have primary specializations in other language groups but also a desire to learn about Chinese for comparative purposes. Each chapter is extremely informative and also well-balanced and objective in its presentation thanks to the considerable efforts of the team of contributors to the volume, to whom we are tremendously grateful. We feel that the collection of chapters specifi-cally created for the Handbook of Chinese Linguistics demonstrates the depth of understanding that there already is of Chinese after three decades of the formal analysis of different varieties of the language, and hope that the insights and controversies described in the volume will stimulate much further research in the years to come.

Syntax, Semantics, and Morphology

Part I

1 Morphology

WEI-WEN ROGER LIAO

The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, First Edition. Edited by C.-T. James Huang, Y.-H. Audrey Li, and Andrew Simpson.© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

1  Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of morphological phenomena in Mandarin Chinese. Although Chinese is in the main an isolating language, with significantly less morphology than agglutinating and polysynthetic languages, a range of both inflectional and derivational affixes do occur and are productive, and will be discussed in Section 2. Like many other heavily isolating languages, Chinese exhibits great richness in the area of compounding, and much of the chapter focuses on this aspect of morphology in Chinese. Section 3 discusses general pat-terns found in nominal compounds and the controversial issue of the headedness of Chinese compounds. Section 4 takes the study of compounds further into the verbal domain and examines the status of a particularly challenging type of com-pound in Chinese, verb–object/VO compounds, which seem to behave both as morphological compounds and syntactic phrases, posing potential problems for their categorization as objects formed by morphological or syntactic rules. Before we proceed to consider these issues, certain standard morphological terminology made use of in the chapter will be noted. First, in terms of structural role, a mor-pheme (the smallest meaningful or grammatical unit participating in word formation operations) may be a stem (the base of which is called a root) or an affix (AFF). If a morpheme is able to stand alone as an independent word, it is termed a free morpheme; it is otherwise referred to as a bound morpheme. By such a defini-tion, all affixes are necessarily bound, while roots may be either free or bound (simple examples of bound roots in Chinese would be ge- in ge-dan “pigeon-egg, pigeon egg” and er- in er-zi “son-Affix, son”). Affixes are further divided into two types, according to their morphological functions. Derivational affixes gener-ally change the categories of the stems they attach to, while inflectional affixes

4 Syntax, Semantics, and Morphology

contribute grammatical information and functions to the stems but do not affect the category of the stem (e.g., plural marking on nouns, tense affixation to verbs).

2  Affixes in Chinese

In its inventory of affixal elements, Chinese has been noted to exhibit both inflec-tional and derivational affixes, as broadly defined above (Dai 1992; Packard 2000).1 In what follows in Sections 2.1–2.2, a sampling of representative affixes given in Chao (1968), Dai (1992), Li and Thompson (1981), and Packard (2000), is given, categorized here according to their categorial statuses (i.e., whether the inflec-tional affixes are attached to verbal or nominal stems, and whether the deriva-tional affixes yield verbal or nominal stems). In Section 2.3, a controversial issue is discussed regarding the correct distinction of bound roots and derivational affixes in Chinese.

2.1  Inflectional affixes2.1.1 Nominal inflectional affixes Chinese nouns are in general rather “bare” because they are not inflected for grammatical gender, number, or person. The plural (PL) suffix -men, which is used with human nouns and pronouns in standard Mandarin, marks the only exception, as illustrated in (1):2

(1) N[+human]-men “noun-Plural”ren-men “person-PL: people,” laoshi-men “teacher-PL: teachers,” nan-hai-men “male-child-PL: boys,” gong-ren-men “work-man-PL: workers,” wo/ni/ta-men “I/you/he-PL: we/you/they” (but not *niu-men “cow-PL” or *che-men “car-PL”).

(2) N+CL “noun-Collective”zhi-zhang “paper-CL: papers,” niu-zhi “cow-CL: a herd of cows,” ma-pi “horse-CL: a herd of horses,” hua-duo “flower-CL: flowers” (but not *ren-ge “person-CL” or *shou-zhi “hand-CL”).

Chao (1968) notes that certain classifiers can also be used as inflectional suffixes marking plurality and collectivity:

2.1.2 Verbal inflectional affixes Verbal inflections in Chinese are also relatively few. Verbs are only inflected with aspectual suffixes (Asp). In Mandarin, these aspectual suffixes include the Perfective -le, Experiential -guo, and Progressive/Durative -zhe, which combine with verbs in an extremely regular fashion (see Chapter 7 for further discussion). One less-mentioned aspectual suffix, which Chao (1968: 205) refers to as Tentative aspect (while Li and Thompson 1981 and Dai 1992 use the term Delimitative aspect), is in the form of reduplication (RED):

Morphology 5

As Dai (1992) notes, when this rule is applied to disyllabic words, the whole stem must be reduplicated, as shown in (4b), which contrasts with unacceptable redu-plication forms in (4c):

(4) Verb reduplication rule for disyllabic stemsa. [XY]V-RED → XY-XY, when the verbal stem is of the form XYb. [bang-zhu]-bang-zhu “help-help-RED: help a little,” [an-wei]-an-wei

“peace-console-RED: console a little”ssc. *bang-bang-zhu, *bang-zhu-zhu, *bang-bang-zhu-zhu

We shall come back to reduplication in Section 3.2, where the reduplication rule will be shown to be useful for determining the “compound-hood” of Verb–Object compounds.

It can also be noted that adjectives in Chinese may undergo reduplication, and while verbal reduplications take the form XYXY, adjectival reduplications have the different form XXYY (Chao 1968; Li and Thompson 1981). For example, the word qingsong “relax/relaxed” can be used as a verb or as an adjective. The dis-tinction is reflected through different reduplication patterns. Observe the follow-ing examples:

(3) V-RED “V for a short while/a little”zou-zou “walk-walk: walk for a while,” xue-xue “learn-learn: learn a little/for a while,” kan-kan “see-see: watch for a while”

(5) a. [qing-song]V-RED → qing-song-qing-song “to relax a little” [XYXY]b. [qing-song]Adj-RED → qing-qing-song-song “quite relaxed” [XXYY]

2.2  Derivational affixesDerivational affixes generally display a range of characteristics: (i) they select for the syntactic category of the stem/root they attach to; (ii) sometimes they may change the category and meaning of the stem/root they are attached to; and (iii) in some instances they may have no inherent meaning at all. A representative selection of derivational affixes present in Mandarin is illustrated in this section. Structurally, the cross-linguistic observation has been made that a derivational suffix functions as the head of the morphological unit it builds up, in the sense that its categorial feature projects as the identity in the new unit, while only some (but not many) derivational prefixes may function as heads (Di Sciullo and Williams 1987; Williams 1981). This property holds of Chinese too, as shown in (6). The word pai-zi “racket” is formed from the combination of the suffix –zi, which belongs to the category of N, and the verb pai “stroke.” The suffix functions as the head of the output pai-zi, which accordingly is a noun rather than a verb:

(6)

pai-ziN "racket"

-ziNpaiV"stroke" "ZI"

6 Syntax, Semantics, and Morphology

2.2.1 Nominal derivational affixes The suffix -zi, which does not have a substan-tive meaning, is very common in Chinese in combination with monosyllabic roots. The suffix -zi generally selects V or N as its input (in a few exceptional instances -zi also combines with an adjective), and always results in an output of type N/noun:

(7) a. N-ziN

qi-zi “wife-ZI: wife,” er-zi “son-ZI: son,” gua-zi “melon-ZI: melon,” sheng-zi “rope-ZI: rope”

b. V-ziN

pai-zi “stroke-ZI: racket,” shua-zi “brush-ZI: brush,” jia-zi “pick-ZI: clip,” pian-zi “cheat-ZI: cheater”

c. A-ziN

lao-zi “old-ZI: father (pejorative),” xiao-zi “small-ZI: kid,” feng-zi “crazy-ZI: lunatic”

(8) a. V-touN

zhuan-tou “earn-head, opportunity to profit,” xiang-tou “think-head, idea/hope”

b. Adj-touN

lao-tou “old-head, old people (pejorative)”c. N-touN

ling-tou “zero-head, small change”

(9) a. lao-Nlao-hu “old-tiger, tiger,” lao-shu “old-mouse, mouse,” lao-shi “old-teacher, teacher,” lao-po “old-wife, wife,” lao-ban “old-board, boss,” lao-xiong “old-brother, buddy”

Another suffix, -tou (literally “head”), also occurs as a derivational suffix, though less commonly than -zi:

Nominal derivational prefixes are also found in Chinese. For example, the prefix lao- (literally “old”) can be seen in many words in Chinese, which no longer carry the literal meaning “old”:

2.2.2 Verbal derivational affixes There are very few verbal derivational suffixes in Chinese. In fact, the only one that is still quite productive in modern Mandarin is the suffix -hua, which selects for N or Adj as its input, and yields a V:

(10) a. N-huaV

[gong-ye]-hua “labor-industry-HUA: industrialize,” [ji-xie]-hua “machine-machine-HUA: mechanize”

b. A-huaV

ruo-hua “weak-HUA: weaken,” qiang-hua “strong-HUA: strengthen,” huo-hua “active-HUA: activate,” zi-dong-hua “self-move-HUA: automatize”

Morphology 7

2.2.3 Adjectival derivational affixes The prefix ke- (literally “able”) is a notable case of a prefix that may function as a head (it changes a V input to an Adj output):

(11) keAdj-V => Adjke-ai “able-love: lovable,” ke-hen “able-hate: detestable,” ke-xiao “able-laugh: laughable,” ke-lian “able-pity: pitiable,” ke-shi “able-eat: edible,” ke-gui “able-expensive: valuable”

2.3  On bound roots and derivational affixesIn addition to the class of derivational affixes illustrated with examples above, Chinese also has a significant number of elements that function as bound roots – roots that cannot stand as words by themselves. As there are various similarities between bound roots and derivational affixes, it is always a challenging in Chinese morphology to decide whether a bound morpheme should be categorized as a bound root or a derivational affix.

Dai (1992: section 4.2) lists four relevant criteria which may be used to differ-entiate bound roots from affixes, while recognizing that none of the criteria is, by itself, precise enough to be decisive in the categorization of bound morphemes: (i) affixes tend to be more productive than bound roots; (ii) the meanings of affixes tend to be consistent, and are sometimes more abstract in nature than the mean-ings of bound roots (or are even without any clearly definable meaning); (iii) affixes tend to perform certain grammatical functions; and (iv) affixes tend to attach to free forms. Notice that all of these criteria are effectively stated as “ten-dencies” since counterexamples can always be found (see Dai 1992 for details). The criteria (i) to (iii) are also adopted in Packard (2000: Section 3.4.3.2). Using these criteria, Dai (1992) argues that examples like -xi in xue-xi “study-practice: study,” yu- in yu-jian “pre-see: foresee,” -ti in shen-ti “body-body: body,” and -qi in yue-qi “music-instrument: musical instrument” are actually all derivational suf-fixes, rather than bound roots.

Before reconsidering the affix vs. root status of these bound morphemes noted by Dai, it is worth noticing that similar challenges of bound morpheme categoriza-tion occur in English too. For example, consider the neoclassic bound roots bio-, photo-, and -(o)logy in English (Bauer 1983; Plag 2003; Selkirk 1982). At first glance, these bound morphemes appear to be affixes. However, Plag (2003) argues that a “bio-logy problem” occurs if we consider these bound morphemes as affixes. Specifically, if bio- and -logy were both to be classed as affixes, then it would have to be concluded that the word bio-logy contains no root, violating the fundamental principle of word formation that every word contains at least one root. Plag (2003) therefore concludes that forms such as bio- and -logy are best analyzed as bound roots (in other words, bio-logy will be analyzed as a compound; see Section 3).

The same operating criterion can be adopted to determine the affix vs. root status of bound morphemes in Chinese. For example, yu- “pre-” and -xi “practice,” which Dai (1992) considers affixes, should instead (following Plag’s approach to bio-logy) be analyzed as bound roots because their combination in yu-xi

8 Syntax, Semantics, and Morphology

“pre-practice: preview/practice beforehand” is also a well-formed word (or at least, one of the two morphemes should be classed as a bound root, otherwise yu-xi will be rootless). Another useful criterion, based on the word-internal posi-tion of bound morphemes, can now be added here as a means to distinguish the root vs. affixal status of bound morphemes. Categorizing a bound morpheme as an affix entails that the affix occurs in a regular, fixed position relative to the stem it attaches to as either a prefix or a suffix, while a root in principle has greater freedom in positioning and might be expected to occur in different word-internal positions relative to other roots (while maintaining a constant meaning). Consequently, if a bound morpheme is not subject to a positional constraint, it should clearly best be analyzed as a bound root. Applying such a criterion to the morphemes considered by Dai above, yu- “pre-” should most probably be catego-rized as a prefix, while -xi “practice” should be treated as a bound root. This is because -xi can be found in word-initial as well as word-final position (e.g., xi-zuo “practice-doing, assignment”, xi-guan “practice-tendency, habit”, etc.), but it is difficult to find yu- in a non-initial, non-prefix position. By the same criterion, -qi “instrument” and -ti “body” should also be treated as bound roots, instead of suffixes (contra Dai 1992), since one can find words like qi-ju “instrument-tool: tool” and ti-ji “body-volume: volume.”

Other cases are trickier, due to the fact that some bound morphemes exhibit polysemy (there are actually different morphemes which share the same phonologi-cal form). For example, consider the prefix lao- “(literally) old” and the suffix -tou “(literally) head”. These bound morphemes no longer carry their literal meanings when they are affixes (e.g., lao-hu “old-tiger: tiger,” lao-shi “old-teacher: teacher,” zhuan-tou “earn-head: opportunity to profit”; see (8) and (9)). However, in other instances, they seem to behave as bound roots, keeping their literal meanings. As the positional criterion above predicts, such non-literal uses of lao and tou are not restricted to fixed word-internal positions:

(12) a. lao “old” used as bound rootlao-tou “old-head: old people (pejorative),” lao-ren “old-person: senior citizen,” nian-lao “age-old: aged,” qi-lao “old-old: aged and respectable person,” yuan-lao “origin-old: senior statesman”

b. tou “head” used as bound roottou-fa “head-hair: hair,” tou-kui “head-helmet: helmet,” che-tou “car-head: hood of vehicle,”

We can thus conclude the following. If a bound morpheme carries no substantive meaning, and/or its position is fixed, it is best analyzed as an affix. Otherwise, it should be categorized as a bound root.3

3  Compounds in Chinese

Compounding gives rise to a rich set of vocabulary in Chinese. Following Chao (1968) and Plag (2003), a broad definition of compounds is adopted here: a mor-

Morphology 9

phological word is a compound if it consists of two or more (free or bound) roots. Consequently, disyllabic compounds may consist of (i) two free roots, (ii) a free root combined with a bound root, or (iii) two bound roots. Such a definition of compounding is both optimally straightforward and naturally allows for the characterization of the bound root compounds that are so prevalent in Chinese. Section 3.1 now provides an overview of the various types of compound found in Chinese, and follows this with a review of the controversial issue of compound headedness in Section 3.2.

3.1  Types of compoundsTwo popular approaches to the categorization of compounds in Chinese have been: (i) to categorize compounds in terms of the syntactic and semantic relations which hold between the sub-components of the compounds (Huang 1984; Y. Huang 1991; Li and Thompson 1981; Tang 1988); and (ii) to categorize compounds simply in terms of the morpho-syntactic categories (N, V, Adj etc.) of the compo-nent parts (S. Huang 1998; Packard 2000). This chapter makes primary use of the first approach, though the categories of the sub-components of the compounds are also noted. By virtue of the syntactic and semantics relations which obtain between the internal parts of compounds, compounds in Chinese can roughly be categorized into the following types:

(13) Coordinative/Parallel Compounds (The two roots carry similar, related, or contrary meanings)a. N-N: lei-dian “thunder-lightning: thunder,” zi-nu “son-daughter:

children,” jun-zhu “king-master: monarch,” li-lun “reason-discussion: theory,” zuo-you “left-right: control,” shi-fei “affirmative-negative: right and wrong/trouble,” mao-dun “spear-shield: contradiction”

b. V-V, Adj-Adj: bang-zhu “help-help: help,” qian-yi “move-relocate: relocate,” jian-cha “test-examine: examine,” cui-hui “damage-destroy: destroy,” zhu-li “help-arrange: assistant,” fang-qi “drop-renounce: abandon,” bao-bian “praise-condemn: appraise,” chang-duan “long-short: gossip/accident”

(14) Modifier–Head Compounds (One root modifies – or restricts – the other root)a. Adj-N, V-N: hei-ban “black-board: blackboard,” luo-ye “drop-leave:

fallen leaves,” jian-yu “surveillance-prison: prison,” duan-chu “short-point: shortcoming”

b. N-N: ti-wen “body-temperature: temperature,” che-deng “car-light: headlight,” deng-ta “light-tower: light house,” nü-zhuang “woman-clothes: women’s clothes”

c. Adj-V, N-V: man-pao “slow-run: jog,” man-dun “slow-stew: slow cook,” kuang-ben “crazy-run: run extremely fast,” da-jiao “big-cry: cry loud,” tuan-gou “group-buy: bulk buy”

10 Syntax, Semantics, and Morphology

Larger nominal compounds (more than two roots) are also possible. These are constructed by building any type of compound into a Modifier–Head (M–H) compound structure (such complex compounds will be discussed further in Section 3.2). Some examples are given below:

(18) Verb-Object compound as part of a larger M–H compound:a. [[xi-yi]V-ji]N “[[wash-clothes]-machine]: washing machine”b.

N

V N

M-H compound

V-O compound

V Nji

xi yi

(19) Parallel compound and M–H compound as part of a larger M–H compound: [[VV]V [VN]N]N

a. [[jian-cha]V-[zhi-du]N]N “[[test-examine]-[restrict-degree]]: examination rule/censorship”

(15) Verb–Resultative Compounds (One root denotes the action, and the other root refers to the result)V-Adj, V-V: chi-wan “eat-finish: finish eating,” chi-ni “eat-tired: tired of eating,” nong-huai “do-ruined: damage/ruin,” shai-gan “expose.to.sunlight-dry: dry something under the sun”

(16) Subject–Predicate Compounds (One root is the subject, while the other root functions as the predicate)N-V, N-Adj: ri-chu “sun-rise: sunrise,” ri-luo “sun-fall: sunset,” di-zhen “land-vibrate: earthquake,” tou-teng “head-ache: get a headache/feel troubled,” yan-hong “eye-red: envy,” lian-hong “face-red: feel embarrassed,” xin-ruan “heart-soft: forgiving”

(17) Verb–Object Compounds (One root refers to the predicate, while the other root a thematically related object – theme, location, instrument, etc. – (Y. Huang 1991))V-N: dou-feng “catch-wind: go for a drive,” kai-xin “open-heart: feel happy,” guan-xin “close-heart: care for,” kai-dao “open-knife: operate,” kai-che “open-car: drive car,” chu-ban “come.out-printing: publish,” jian-fei “subtract-fat: lose weight,” jie-hun “join-marriage: get married,” huai-yi “bear-doubt: suspect,” dong-shou “move-hand: start (working on something)”

Morphology 11

b.

N

V N

V V V Njian cha zhi du

Parallel compound

M-H compound

3.2  Heads of compounds3.2.1 Endocentric vs. exocentric compounds One of the controversies present in discussions of Chinese morphology is the issue of headedness in Chinese com-pounds. The “head” of a compound refers to the element that projects its categori-cal identity in the compound structure (e.g., the noun “suit” in the Adj–N compound [N [Adj wet] [N suit]], which functions as a noun not an adjective), and whose meaning is regularly dominant in the compound (hence “cave man” is a type of “man” not a type of “cave”, due to the semantic dominance of the com-pound head “man”). A definition of headedness is given by Di Sciullo and Williams 1987, as in (20):

(20) The definition of heads of compoundsIn a compound [XY], Y is the head if and only if [XY] inherits the linguistic features of Y (the features may include semantic content, syntactic category, and phi-features, etc.).

If a compound has a head, it is called an endocentric compound, and a compound is called an exocentric compound if no head can be defined from its components. When, in certain instances, both elements appear to function as heads within a compound, such a compound is referred to as double-headed. Simple illustrations of endocentric, exocentric, and double-headed compounds from English are given in (21–23), in which the compound heads are bold-faced:

(21) Endocentric compoundsa. [blackA-birdN]N: a kind of bird that is generally blackb. [truckN-driverN]N: a kind of driver that operates truckc. [strongAdj-manN]N: a kind of man that is strong

(22) Exocentric compoundsa. [bigA-footN]N: not a kind of foot or bigness, but an ape-like monster with

big feetb. [saberN-toothN]N: not a kind of saber or tooth, but a kind of cat with

saber-like teethc. [blackA-outP]N: not a kind of blackness, but an incident of power outage.

12 Syntax, Semantics, and Morphology

(23) Double-headed compoundsa. [doctorN-patientN]N: refers to both doctor and patientb. [mindN-bodyN]N: refers to both mind and bodyc. [natureN-nurtureN]N: refers to nature and nurture

In English, endocentric compounds are most common, and they are all right-headed. That is, English compounds (as well as derivational and inflectional morphology) are governed by the right-hand head rule (Lieber 1992; Williams 1981). In view of the complexity and variety of compounds in Chinese, a natural ques-tion to ask is whether any kind of headedness rule applies consistently within Chinese compounds? Section 3.2.2 reviews three relevant proposals from the lit-erature, all of which arguably capture only part of the patterns observed in Chinese. It will be pointed out that the headedness of compounds in Chinese is in fact directly correlated to the compound types noted in Section 3.1, which in turn supports an approach categorizing compounds in terms of their internal syntactic and semantic relations.

3.2.2 Earlier accounts By means of a statistical method, S. Huang (1998) demon-strates that it is virtually impossible to predict which element in Chinese compounds will function as a head, because the combination of N, V, and Adj elements in any linear order seems to result in compounds that are nouns, verbs, and adjectives. For example, a combination of V and N in either order (V–N and N–V compounds) may yield an output which is a verb/V, a noun/N, or even an adjective/Adj. Using Guoyu Ribao Cidian (Mandarin Daily Dictionary) as a corpus, the statistical results are listed in (24) (only the results from V–N and N–V com-pounds are shown here; see S. Huang 1998: 264). S. Huang therefore argues that Chinese compounds are essentially headless. That is to say, they are not governed by a headedness rule:

(24) Input\Output V N A Total[V–N] compounds 1581 2940 378 4881[N–V] compounds 306 446 72 824

(25) a. [[AN]NN]N [[xiao-shu]-dian] “small-number-point: decimal point”b. [A [NN]N]N [xian-[ya-dian]] “salty-duck-egg: salted duck egg”c. [[VN]VN]N [[lu-yin]-ji] “record-sound-machine: tape recorder”d. [[VV]VN]N [[jiang-luo]-san] “descending-dropping-umbrella:

parachute”

S. Huang’s conclusion does not go without challenge in the literature, however. Starosta et al. (1998), concede that if one looks at disyllabic compounds, it is not clear whether there is a uniform headedness rule in Chinese. However, if longer compounds are considered (compounds with three or more morphemes), it becomes clear that headedness does play a significant role in Chinese compounds and consistently follows the same right-hand head rule as in English. Some exam-ples are illustrated here, with heads being bold-faced (Starosta et al. 1998: 354):