Sentence-Final Particles in Chinese

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Junnan Pan
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Discourse Function ◽  
Work Related ◽  
The Core ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
Traditional Grammar ◽  
Root Properties ◽  
Peripheral Domain ◽  
Final Particles

Chinese has a rich system of Sentence-Final Particles (SFPs). Traditional grammar and descriptive linguistic studies attempt to capture the precise semantic interpretation and the discourse function of each particle. Much work related to this aspect tries to find out what the core semantic interpretation of a given SFP is, how the diverse interpretations of a given SFP are developed from its core interpretation, and in what context the use of a given SFP is licit. Linguists from different disciplines have made important observations and offered various explanations. On the other hand, diachronic studies trace the origin and the evolution of each SFP, which helps understand the core semantics of SFPs in modern Chinese. Studies on different Chinese dialects also help the understanding of the meaning and the function of SFPs from a comparative perspective. Under the generative framework, SFPs are analyzed as complementizers, which are located in the peripheral domain. Both traditional grammarians and generative syntacticians are interested in patterns like the rigid order that necessarily shows whenever SFPs co-occur. They attempt to establish the hierarchical order of SFPs and identify the general principle that regulates such an order. Recent studies show that such an order is regulated by a discourse constraint related to subjectivity, according to which the higher a functional projection is located, the more directly it is for such a projection to be linked to the speaker’s attitude, the more subjective the interpretation of such a projection becomes, and the less likely it is for such a projection to be embedded. This constraint offers an explanation to the question of why only some SFPs can appear in embedded clauses whereas the others demonstrate root properties. Syntacticians are also interested in the question of how to derive the final order of SFPs. Two analyses are available: disjunction analysis and complement-to-specifier raising analysis. A more recent finding is that under the minimalist framework, each SFP heads a phase and bears an EPP feature. Complement-to-specifier raising is required as a last resort to satisfy the Extended Projection Principle (EPP). The complement of an SFP is moved to the phase edge to postpone the transfer of the phrases that are embedded within the complement, which allows these phrases to be extracted later.

Deriving Head-Final Order in the Peripheral Domain of Chinese

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-55
Author(s):  
Victor Junnan Pan
Keyword(s):  
Strong Argument ◽  
Project Phases ◽  
Peripheral Domain ◽  
Final Particles

This article proposes a unified analysis of the peripheral projections in Chinese, which does not rely on a head-directionality parameter. Each of these projections constitutes a phase and that its head bears an EPP feature, which must be satisfied. Chinese peripheral projections demonstrate four different ways to satisfy EPP. Importantly, Sentence-Final Particles (SFPs) project phases and their complements obligatorily move to the specifier as a last resort to satisfy the EPP. The movement of the complement to the phase edge would postpone the transfer of phrases embedded in the complement, allowing these phrases to move later. When the phase edge is not available for the moved complement, phrases embedded within the complement will not be able to be extracted in the later stage after the complement is transferred. This constitutes a strong argument in favor of the obligatory complement-to-specifier raising analysis for SFPs in Chinese.

New Economy Careers Demand Adaptive Mental Models and Resources

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annelies E. M. van Vianen ◽  
Ute-Christine Klehe
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
New Economy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Career Transitions ◽  
Work Related ◽  
The Core ◽  
Identity Threats ◽  
And Coping

Volatile economic and labor market circumstances have significant effects on the development of people’s work careers; thus recent literature on careers has started to take into account the reality of increasingly unpredictable, nonlinear, and inherently uncertain careers. In this chapter we argue that careers in the new economy require, first, that people learn to cope with identity threats; second, that they need to change their mental models of careers; and third, that they must develop the resources to adapt to more frequent and unpredictable career transitions. Specifically we address three themes that we consider at the core of adaptation to nonlinear careers: people’s work-related identities, their conceptualization of career success, and their adaptability resources. We build a model called “identity and coping during career transitions” (ICCT), which integrates theories on identity, careers, and adaptability and could serve as an agenda for future research. Finally, we provide some guidelines for practitioners and organizations.

scholarly journals Is Art History of China Useless in a Pandemic?

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng He Schöneweiß
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Art History ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Life Crisis ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
The Core ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
History Of

The study of Chinese art has long been a specialised field bridging the disciplines of art history and Chinese studies. This essay challenges, as always in a real-life crisis, the usefulness of art history of China in the current Covid-19 pandemic. The agency of art historians is put under the historiographical grill. Through two brief case studies, the essay argues that art historians, though as mortal and fragile, are actually professionally equipped to strike the core consequences of the pandemic in its social, political, and cultural aspects.

Labeling for linearization

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-116
Author(s):  
Kensuke Takita
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Phase Theory ◽  
Structure Building ◽  
The Core ◽  
Precedence Relations ◽  
Pf Interface ◽  
Pf Deletion

AbstractThe primary goal of the present paper is to argue for the hypothesis that labeling is required for linearization, which is called Labeling for Linearization (LfL). To achieve this goal, it is first argued that labels are not necessary for semantic interpretation. It is then proposed that labels are necessary for linearization at the PF-interface in that they serve as a device to encode structural asymmetries that are employed to determine precedence relations, which are asymmetric as well. It is also shown that LfL can remove several problems of the original labeling framework. Building on the idea that Spell-Out applies to the whole phase but not its subpart, it is illustrated that the LfL-based analysis can solve the problem concerning the variable ways of applying Spell-Out, which arises in the standard phase theory. Extending the LfL-based framework to Japanese, a novel analysis of particle-stranding ellipsis is also proposed. Incorporating some insights of recent approaches that particle-stranding ellipsis arises through a PF-deletion process, it is shown that the proposed analysis based on LfL offers a theoretically more suitable characterization of the PF-deletion process. In this way, the present article contributes to not only sharpening the core theoretical notions regarding structure building and linearization in terms of labeling but also deepening our understanding of the structure of Japanese.

Mao in Perspective

2006 ◽  
Vol 187 ◽  
pp. 659-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Gray
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
The Core ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Editor's preface. It is unusual for The China Quarterly to publish anything in unfinished form, but the provenance of this piece by Jack Gray is equally unusual. In the second half of the 20th century, Jack was one of the UK's more important figures in contemporary Chinese studies, perhaps most noted for the text he produced in retirement, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to 2000. What follows here is an extracted version of a set of ideas he set down in 2003–04 for a manuscript on Mao Zedong, still in note form at the time of his passing in late 2004. It forms the core of a mini-symposium on reconsidering Mao on the 30-year anniversary of his death in September 1976. Mark Selden, Chris Bramall and Rebecca Karl offer responses to Jack Gray's views, and to the question of Mao's legacy in general.

The emergence of e5 khuan2 个款 as a sensory evidential marker in TSM

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-190
Author(s):  
Chinfa Lien
Keyword(s):  
Layered Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Ambiguous Case ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Final Particles

Abstract This paper takes the string e5 khuan2 个款 (EK for short) as an ambiguous case to show the emergence of a grammatical function out of a lexical category. It examines the ambiguity of EK in conjunction with the analysis of its syntactic structure. It explores the collocates of EK including a range of matrix predicates and sentence-final particles. It pins down EK as a sensory evidential marker in semantic interpretation. Finally, it teases out the unique syntactic and semantic properties of EK in terms of the layered structure of sentence-final particles.

Individuals with Work-related Disabilities: Locus of Control, Attitudes Toward Work, and Cooperation With The Rehabilitation Worker

1996 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana Duvdevany ◽  
Arie Rimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Locus Of Control ◽  
Work Related ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Relationship

The study tested the association between the individual's locus of control, his/her attitudes toward work (“work personality”) and the rehabilitation counselor's evaluation of his/her cooperation with the client among 200 Israelis with work-related disabilities. The core findings were the relationship between the person's locus of control (internal) and his/her attitudes toward work (“work personality”), and between the degree of cooperation with the client and the latter favorable attitudes toward his/her work. Findings are interpreted in respect to practice.

scholarly journals Nominal Compound Interpretation by Intelligent Agents

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie McShane ◽  
Stephen Beale ◽  
Petr Babkin
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Minimal Extension ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
The Core ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
Language Interpretation ◽  
Nominal Compounds

This paper presents a cognitively-inspired algorithm for the semantic analysis of nominal compounds by intelligent agents. The agents, modeled within the OntoAgent environment, are tasked to compute a full context-sensitive semantic interpretation of each compound using a battery of engines that rely on a high-quality computational lexicon and ontology. Rather than being treated as an isolated “task”, as in many NLP approaches, nominal compound analysis in OntoAgent represents a minimal extension to the core process of semantic analysis. We hypothesize that seeking similarities across language analysis tasks reflects the spirit of how people approach language interpretation, and that this approach will make feasible the long-term development of truly sophisticated, human-like intelligent agents. The initial evaluation of our approach to nominal compounds are fixed expressions, requiring individual semantic specification at the lexical level.

scholarly journals Water in Mesoporous Confinement: Glass-To-Liquid Transition or Freezing of Molecular Reorientation Dynamics?

Molecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (19) ◽  
pp. 3563
Author(s):  
Schranz ◽  
Soprunyuk
Keyword(s):  
Porous Silica ◽  
Mechanical Analysis ◽  
Mechanical Relaxation ◽  
Molecular Reorientation ◽  
Work Related ◽  
The Core ◽  
Liquid Transition ◽  
Relaxation Measurements ◽  
Reorientation Dynamics ◽  
Lower Temperature

The first mechanical relaxation measurements (f = 400 Hz) of water confined in micro-porous silica were performed more than 40 years ago. The authors reported a so called “capillary transition” (here denoted as P3) of water in the core of the pores and a second one at a lower temperature, which they called the “adsorbate transition” (P1 in present work) related to water near the surface of the pores. The capillary transition was identified with the freezing of water in the centre of the pores. However, even 40 years later, the origin of the adsorbate transition is not yet clear. One study relates it to the liquid-to-glass transition of the supercooled water in the pores, and another study to the freezing of the proton reorientations at the lattice defects. The present work shows the data from extensive dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) measurements (f = 0.1 Hz–70 Hz) of water confined in mesoporous silica (d = 2.5, 5 and 10 nm), which are in favour of a liquid-to-glass scenario.

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