Sinitic Languages of China [SLCH]
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Edited by:
Hilary Chappell
The series Sinitic Languages of China: Typological Descriptions specializes in the description of the grammar of Sinitic languages, ‘Sinitic’ being the technical term for the Chinese branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. As such, it includes well-known examples such as Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghainese and Hakka, lesser-known ones such as Hunanese Xiang or the Jin languages of Shanxi, without overlooking the national language known as Putonghua in China – or Standard Chinese in the West. Even Mandarin comes in many non-standard forms including Sichuanese in the southwest, or the unusual varieties spoken in Gansu and Qinghai in northwestern China and the Central Plains region, to name but a few.
The primary goal of this series is to promote scientific knowledge of Chinese languages and their typological characteristics through the publication of high calibre linguistic research, based on empirical fieldwork, close analysis of the data and solid theoretical interpretations. The grammatical descriptions, written in a functionalist framework, will be illustrated by linguistic examples presented in a ‘value-added’ four-line format that includes romanization, glossing, the idiomatic English translation, and also the Chinese characters to cater to historical and comparative interests as well as our sinophone readers.
The specific objective is to reveal the great structural diversity found in Sinitic languages and to dispel many recurrent linguistic myths about Chinese. The authors involved in this series are all highly trained fieldwork linguists with a background in both typology and Chinese linguistics.
The series thus aims to reach an international readership for the first time, given that most literature available on Chinese languages, up until now, has been predominantly written in (Standard Written) Chinese.
Topics
Caijia, [meŋ²¹ni³³ŋoŋ³³] ‘Caijia speech’, is an endangered language in the Sino-Tibetan family with less than 1000 speakers in Hezhang and Weining counties in northwest in Guizhou Province in Southwest China. Its sub-classification remains unclear. It was almost four decades ago when the Caijia language was officially reported for the first time in 1982 by the Language Team of Bureau of Ethnic Identification in Bijie, yet this language has nevertheless remained neither well-described nor studied. This book, a linguistic description of the Xingfa variety of Caijia based on the fieldwork data in Xingfa township of Hezhang county, is the first reference grammar of the Caijia language, covering its sound system, word formation, parts of speech and syntactic structures in fifteen chapters.
Being analytic, Caijia presents many common grammatical features attested in East and Southeast Asian languages, for example, compounds, quadrisyllabic idiomatic expressions or elaborate expressions, lack of inflection, a classifier system, a strong relationship between nominalization and relativization, pro-drop and grammaticalization of verbs. Moreover, Caijia shares more similarities with Sinitic languages. Apart from these common areal features, this book will also reveal some special features of Caijia.
This is the first comprehensive grammar of Shaowu, a Min language spoken in Shaowu city and its environs in northwestern Fujian province, China. The book offers first-hand linguistic data collected over four years in the field, now placed at the disposal of researchers and students working in language documentation, comparative linguistics and Sinitic typology. It can serve as a reference grammar for those interested in learning the Shaowu language, thereby helping to preserve it. In addition, the book provides insights into Shaowu's classification which has been widely debated, thus elucidating its genetic affiliation.
The book first presents Shaowu's geography, demography and history. It then profiles the language's phonology and lexicon, before providing a detailed description of its syntax, notably on its nominal, predicate, clausal and complex sentence structures, which are the focus of the book.
The typological profile of Shaowu is also treated with the conclusion that the language has Gan, Hakka, Mandarin and even some Wu overlays on its Min base. The Shaowu language serves an excellent example to illustrate the degree of hybridity a language can attain due to intensive language contact over time.
Written in the style of a reference grammar, this book sets out to give a comprehensive and systematic description of Yichun grammar, with the aim of increasing readers' knowledge about Chinese languages other than Mandarin. In addition to common categories like nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions, the volume attempts to cover as many grammatical categories and constructions as possible, including the Sinitic-specific categories such as classifiers, the aspect system, postpositions and the object-marking BA constructions.
To highlight its uniqueness, the book adopts a comparative perspective to contrast many features of Yichun Gan with Mandarin and other Sinitic languages. Our study shows that Yichun Gan possesses both Northern and Southern Chinese traits in many constructions, which supports its status as a transitional language.
It will be of interest to linguists who wish to learn more about East Asian languages, and more specifically Sinitic languages.
