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The goal of this pioneering work is to make available to Chinese linguists, as well as linguists in general, the results of the most recent research - not only the author's but that of scholars all over the world - on two of the most discussed topics in the history of Chinese: word-order change and grammaticalization.
Chinese is spoken by more people than any other language in the world, and has a rich social, cultural and historical background. This 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.
This important study of semantic change examines how new meanings arise through language use, especially the various ways in which speakers and writers experiment with uses of words and constructions in the flow of strategic interaction with addressees. There has been growing interest in exploring systemicities in semantic change from a number of perspectives including theories of metaphor, pragmatic inferencing, and grammaticalization. Like earlier studies, these have for the most part been based on data taken out of context. This book is a detailed examination of semantic change from the perspective of historical pragmatics and discourse analysis. Drawing on extensive corpus data from over a thousand years of English and Japanese textual history, Traugott and Dasher show that most changes in meaning originate in and are motivated by the associative flow of speech and conceptual metonymy.
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.
Two Voices in One: Essays in Asian and Translation Studies is a collection of papers by eight scholars of international standing. Concentrating on what really makes Asian and Translation Studies fascinating and worth one’s while, it opens the reader’s eyes to new horizons, horizons not found in collections or monographs that look at either discipline in isolation. In going through the collection, the reader will see how a translation problem can rear a “yellow-ochre head,” why a Chinese garden can become a source language text, and in what way a commentary can shine with “Multiflorate Splendour.” Emerging from the surreal world, the reader must be prepared, first to have his/her ...
A crucial question for Chinese as a Second Language research is how to help elevate Chinese language teaching methodology to the level of other world language methodologies such as English, Spanish and German. This work goes in two directs. One explores how to apply research results achieved in Chinese linguistics to Chinese language teaching and the other is engaged in creating a strong applied linguistics research field that supports Chinese language teaching. CASLAR scholars are mainly involved in the latter one. This book is a representative sample of their research endeavors.
Written Taiwanese provides the first comprehensive account of the different ways in which Taiwanese (i.e., the Southern Min language of Taiwan) has been represented in written sources. The scope of the study ranges from early popular writings in closely related dialects to present-day forms of written Taiwanese. The study treats written Taiwanese both as a linguistic and as a socio-political phenomenon. The linguistic description focuses on the interrelation between written units and Taiwanese speech and covers various linguistic subfields, such as Taiwanese lexicography, phonology, and morphosyntax. The socio-political analysis explores the historical backgrounds which have led to different conventions in writing Taiwanese.
This handbook explores multiple facets of the study of word classes, also known as parts of speech or lexical categories. These categories are of fundamental importance to linguistic theory and description, both formal and functional, and for both language-internal analyses and cross-linguistic comparison. The volume consists of five parts that investigate word classes from different angles. Chapters in the first part address a range of fundamental issues including diversity and unity in word classes around the world, categorization at different levels of structure, the distinction between lexical and functional words, and hybrid categories. Part II examines the treatment of word classes acr...
This volume is about the lasting impact of new (Western) notions on the 19th and early 20th century Chinese language; their invention, spread and standardization. Reaching beyond the mere cataloguing of the thousands of lexical innovations in this period of change, the essays explore the multiple ways in which initially alien notions were naturalized in Chinese scientific and political discourse. Topics examined range from preconceptions about the capacity of the Chinese language to accommodate foreign ideas, the formation of specific nomenclatures and the roles of individual translators, to Chinese and European attempts at coming to terms with each other’s grammar. By systematically analysing and assessing the lexical adaptation of Western notions in Chinese contexts, the book will serve as a valuable reference work for all those interested in the historical semantics of modern China.
After Confucius is a collection of eight studies of Chinese philosophy from the time of Confucius to the formation of the empire in the second and third centuries B.C.E. As detailed in a masterful introduction, each essay serves as a concrete example of “thick description”—an approach invented by philosopher Gilbert Ryle—which aims to reveal the logic that informs an observable exchange among members of a community or society. To grasp the significance of such exchanges, it is necessary to investigate the networks of meaning on which they rely. Paul R. Goldin argues that the character of ancient Chinese philosophy can be appreciated only if we recognize the cultural codes underlying ...