scholarly journals OCP Avoidance in Classical Chinese: Implications for Tonogenesis

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Isaac Rabinovitch
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
Word Boundaries ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
The Creation

Through a corpus of five pre-Qin (before 221 BCE) texts, this paper argues that the authors of both prose and poetry in Classical Chinese were sensitive to OCP violations at cross-word boundaries, and changed diction and used marked word order as a way to avoid the creation of pseudogeminates across words. The frequency of bigrams which result in pseudogeminates are compared to the predicted frequency of pseudogeminates across the corpus. This paper finds that pseudogeminates are significantly (p<0.00001) rarer than expected through randomization. Furthermore, by analyzing these texts with multiple possible phonological reconstructions, this paper suggests that post-codas, segments which were present in Old Chinese, but were elided during the process of tonogenesis between Old Chinese and Middle Chinese, were most likely present in the Chinese of the writers of the texts. Evidence comes from the consistency of OCP avoidance across all tones of Chinese assuming the presence of post-codas, and the lack of consistency thereof when post-codas are not assumed.

Digitization of Old Chinese Bibles (pre-1950s)

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Wong
Keyword(s):  
Phase I ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Phase Ii ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
Final Goal ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
The 1950S

The program “Digitization of Old Chinese Bibles,” likely the largest digitization program for Chinese Bibles ever undertaken, began in August 2014 under the auspices of the Digital Bible Library (DBL), an initiative of the United Bible Societies with the aim of gathering, validating, and safeguarding Scripture texts and publication assets ( https://thedigitalbiblelibrary.org/home/ ). The completion of Phase I in April 2016 also marked the launch of Phase II of the program. By the time the present article is published, a majority of twenty-two Chinese Bibles (full or New Testament) will have been full-text digitized and uploaded to DBL for wider distribution. The final goal of the digitization program is to digitize all thirty-three extant complete Chinese New Testaments or full Bibles—whether in Wenli (classical) Chinese or Mandarin Chinese—published prior to the 1950s. The purpose of the article is to report on this program, what it entails, and the challenges it faces.

scholarly journals End of an Era: Transforming Language and Society in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, c. 1870-1950

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-299
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Weng
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
The State ◽  
National Standard ◽  
Language Practices ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
Western Imperialism ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Economic Modernization

AbstractScholars have generally taken a “diffusionist” view of the rise of national standard languages—the state pushes for the wider adoption of such languages, and other forces (principally economic modernization) facilitate its diffusion. But such a view is too mechanistic and Eurocentric, and an examination of other, less-familiar cases lends itself to a revised interpretation. Amid Western imperialism and the rise of nationalism in East Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a massive shift in language practices took place between about 1870 and 1950, as regional hegemony shifted from China to Japan. Bound for two millennia by their common use of Classical Chinese, elite literati in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam all moved away from that abstruse lingua franca and turned to the creation of new national vernaculars. I argue for a more “integrationist” perspective: language nationalization was a state-led and top-down process directed at remaking society.

scholarly journals Aplicative Construction in Lamalera Dialect of Lamaholot Language

2017 ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Yosef Demon ◽  
I Wayan Pastika ◽  
Ketut Artawa ◽  
I Nyoman Udayana
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Agglutinative Languages ◽  
Construction Strategies ◽  
Agglutinative Language

The applicative construction is limited as (i) the creation of a new argument of inner objects and (ii) the advancement of a peripheral constituent (locative, instrumental, benefactive, and source) occupying the position of the core argument (object). Thus, applicative constructs include the creation of new objects and the advancement of peripheral arguments occupying the core argument.   Each language has a strategy in getting around the applicative construction. Agglutinative languages for example, deal with morphological applicative construction. Unlike Lamalera dialect of Lamaholot language(LDLL) which is not an agglutinative language. Lamalera dialect of Lamaholot language has a morphophonogical strategy such as sound alternation or internal modification and syntactic strategy of word order. Both LDLL applicative construction strategies will be presented in this article.

scholarly journals Cliticization and Old Chinese word order

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Edith Aldridge
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Movement Analysis ◽  
Chinese Word ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
Basic Word

This paper addresses the controversial question of whether Old Chinese was an OV or VO language. Evidence frequently cited for the OV analysis is the fact that objects sometimes surface in preverbal position. In this paper, I argue that basic word order in Old Chinese was uniformly VO. Preverbal objects achieved their position via movement. This is unsurprising, given that preverbal objects were typically wh-words and pronominal clitics. The primary evidence for the movement analysis, however, comes from the demonstration that it accounts for constraints on pronoun positioning which would be mysterious on a base-generation approach.

scholarly journals Interpretation of the Chinese Press and Features of Its Translation into Ukrainian

wisdom ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-34
Author(s):  
Tetiana KOROLOVA ◽  
Oleksandra POPOVA ◽  
Natalya ZHMAYEVA
Keyword(s):  
Complex Compound ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Idiomatic Expressions ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Simple Sentences ◽  
Language Pair ◽  
Number Of Particles

The paper develops a methodology for interpreting and analysing translation features (including strategies, tactics, and operations) of the Chinese press within the language pair “Chinese – Ukrainian”. Special attention is paid to the lexical and grammatical characteristics of the Chinese press as manipulative instruments. The philosophical background of the Chinese newspaper lexicon is considered, which stipulates a diverse use of common and specific vocabulary (including terms) from modern Chinese (?? / báihuà), idiomatic expressions (?? / chéngy?), neologisms and literary words from old Chinese (?? / wény?), and emotionally coloured vocabulary. The grammatical level is represented by a fixed word order in a sentence; complex, compound, and two-member simple sentences; all communicative types of sentences; lack of elliptical structures; a large number of particles. The research offers an integrated approach to the study of the strategy of communicatively equivalent translation, translation tactics, and operations when dealing with the Chinese press. Some translation regularities are illustrated.

Ancient Chinese sentence final particle ěr 爾

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-64
Author(s):  
Lukáš ZÁDRAPA
Keyword(s):  
Final Particle ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
Comprehensive Study ◽  
Chinese Morphology

Abstract The article amounts to a fully comprehensive study on the sentence final particle ěr 爾 in Classical Chinese. After an overview of the explanations of the functions of the particle in reference books, all relevant occurrences in the pre-Qín texts are analysed, and the results are compared with its usage in the documents of the Western Hàn era. The possible interpretations of its meaning(s) proposed by the author are subsequently put in relation to hypothetical etymological links based on the theory of Old Chinese morphology in Sagart’s vein.

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