A Reference Grammar Of Caijia

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.

A Reference Grammar of Chinese is a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the linguistic structure of Chinese, covering all of the important linguistic features of the language and incorporating insights gained from research in Chinese linguistics over the past thirty years. With contributions from twenty-two leading Chinese linguists, this authoritative guide uses large-scale corpora to provide authentic examples based on actual language use. The accompanying online example databases ensure that a wide range of exemplars are readily available and also allow for new usages to be updated. This design offers a new paradigm for a reference grammar where generalizations can be cross-checked with additional examples and also provide resources for both linguistic studies and language learning. Featuring bilingual term lists, this reference grammar helps readers to access relevant literature in both English and Chinese and is an invaluable reference for learners, teachers and researchers in Chinese linguistics and language processing.

Begins with simple single-word-subject and simple-predicate sentences and moves systematically to transformed simple sentences and finally to compound and complex sentences. Each sentence structure is not only descriptively analyzed, but also formulated in a pedagogical pattern with examples. Exercises are provided in each unit.

This reference grammar provides a description of Mandarin Chinese in familiar terms and enables the English-speaking reader to transfer his/her knowledge of English to the study of Chinese. Many of the unique features of the language are treated through a comparison with semantically corresponding, though syntactically different, features in English. Aside from the conventional types of sentences, special constructions are amply explained and illustrated for the reader. Understanding the specific meaning of each of these constructions is one of the central themes of the grammar. This book contains a number of original analyses, such as that of the -shi---de- construction and the notion of continuum for the indiscrete nature of linguistic structure, which should serve as a valuable reference source for both the language teacher and the profession of Chinese linguistics."

This reference grammar provides, for the first time, a description of the grammar of Mandarin Chinese, the official spoken language of China and Taiwan, in functional terms, focusing on the role and meanings of word-level and sentence-level structures in actual conversations.

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.

Sinitic is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, consisting of thousands of local language varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. This book sets out to give a comprehensive and systematic description of one of these: the Jixi language. It focusses on the Shangzhuang variety and is spoken in the mountainous Jixi county in the southern Anhui province, China. It is a language of a much debated affiliation, wedged in between the Wu, Gan and Southern Mandarin areas. Basic linguistic theory is used as the main theoretical framework to provide a detailed description of the language's phonological and grammatical systems. In writing this grammar, the author has principally relied on fieldwork data collected in Shangzhuang during the years 2010-2018. This book is the first comprehensive grammar of a Hui language and will undoubtedly be of interest to linguists wishing to learn more about the many understudied varieties of Sinitic languages.