Shuanfan Huang

The emergence of a grammatical category definite article in spoken Chinese

Abstract Contrary to assumptions endemic among grammarians working in Chinese linguistics that Chinese lacks a determiner system, I argue the definite determiner is found to regularly emerge from speaker-hearer negotiation in specific, identifiable interactional contexts where the speaker has reason to believe the identity of a referent to be a community shared knowledge which s/he can exploit. Cases of the definite determiner emergence can then be seen as a recurrent and possibly expectable set of interactional moves. I have further argued that the developing definite determiner function of the distal demonstrative nage is breaking through into the language first in the non-subject position of the sentence and that it is the distal nage that is being grammaticalized as the definite determiner in spoken discourse.

Reference to Motion Events in Six Western Austronesian Languages: Toward a Semantic Typology

The language of motion events is a system used to specify the motion of objects through space with respect to other objects. Recent research has shown that languages differ in the relative saliency of manner or path they focus on in motion event descriptions. These can be thought of as different strategies dedicated to specifying the spatial relationship between objects in motion and the landmark object. We propose a four-way typology based on the narrative data from six western Austronesian languages. Evidence is presented that each of the languages examined typically has a preferred strategy for describing motion events and that each has a distinct narrative style. These six languages are shown to share the commonality of giving greater attention to path information in motion events. Path salience in the encoding of motion clauses appears to exhibit a strong diachronic stability, suggesting that Proto-Austronesian was probably also a path-salient language.

Chinese Grammar at Work

Chinese Grammar at Work adopts a cognitive-functional approach and uses a corpus-based methodology to examine how Chinese syntax emerges from natural discourse context and what the evolving grammar at work looks like. In this volume the author weaves together an array of fresh perspectives on clause structure, constructions, interactional linguistics, cognitive science and complex dynamic systems to construct a grammar of spoken Chinese. The volume contains discussions of a large number of topics: contiguity relation, the roles of repair strategies in the shaping of constituent structure, non-canonical word order constructions, pragmatics of referring expressions, classifier constructions, noun-modifying constructions, verb complementation, ethnotheory of the person and constructions specific to the language of emotion, sequential sensitivity of linguistic materials, meaning potential in interaction, the nature of variability and stability in Chinese syntax from the perspective of complexity theory. The result is a volume that highlights the connections between language structure, situated and embodied nature of cognition and language use, and affords a true entree to the exciting realm of Chinese grammar.

A Study of Triple Verb Serialization in Four Formosan Languages

Most previous studies on serial verb constructions (SVC) in Austronesian languages have focused almost exclusively on two-verb constructions. In this study, we examine serial verb constructions involving three or more verbs in four Formosan languages—Kavalan, Saisiyat, Squliq Atayal, and Tsou—focusing our attention on the type of verb serialization that observes the same-subject condition. Action or motion verbs are found to be the only attested final verb in an SVC in these languages. General strategies for triple verb serialization result when any two types of the nonfinal verbs in a two-verb SVC—namely, modal, emotion, evaluative/manner, motion, or “adverbial” verbs—occur before the final action/motion constituent verb in some specific linear order, while Tsou and Kavalan recruit, in addition, one or two types of “sentential adverbial” verbs and degree or quantifier verbs in a language- specific triple verb serialization strategy. A consistent ordering pattern of the various types of verbs is found in all of the languages studied. Quadruple verb serialization, found only in Tsou and Kavalan, results when certain subtypes of “adverbial” verbs occur in combination with certain other subtypes. Our findings are also consonant with a central tenet in theories of construction grammar, that constructions in languages are not broad syntactic templates, but are typically lexically skewed schemas and formulas.

Cebuano Passives Revisited

The view that the gi-clauses and/or their equivalents in other Philippine-type languages, specifically in Cebuano and closely related Bisayan languages, are active constructions has been widely accepted by a number of Austronesian linguists. In a recent study on the gi-verb clauses in Cebuano, however, another linguist reinterprets those with Verb-Patient-Agent (VPA) word order as passive. In this paper, we argue against such an interpretation, based on analyses of the semantics and discourse pragmatics of the gi- and naclauses in spoken data. A gi- attached to a verb implies a deliberate intention of an Agent; a na-clause directs attention to the often accidental effect of an action on a Patient without emphasizing any reference to an Agent. This renders a na-verb construction, especially one in which the Agent is missing, as a much more plausible candidate for passive in Cebuano.

The Pragmatics of Case Marking in Saisiyat

Saisiyat, an Austronesian language spoken in northwest Taiwan, has an elaborate case marking system for nominals and pronominals, but the nominative case is often zero marked. Based on natural spoken data, we demonstrate that this absence of nominative case markers is closely tied to the ongoing word order shift from a V-initial language to a strongly subject-initial language, especially in Agent-Focus sentences, rendering any marking for the nominative case pragmatically redundant. Nominative case marking remains a pragmatic option for the presentative construction to introduce a new referent into discourse. A second issue addressed concerns the coding of the Recipient in a ditransitive sentence. We present an unusual case of biaccusative constructions where the semantic role of the Recipient is marked by either the dative or the accusative case marker, the choice being pragmatically determined by the spatial or psychological distance between the Agent and the Recipient. If the Recipient is perceived as being within the spatial or psychological sphere of influence of the Agent and consequently likely to be affected by the action of the Agent, the accusative case is preferred; elsewhere the dative is used. The effect of this is to produce biaccusative constructions, because the Theme in ditransitive sentences is always coded by the accusative case. Case marking in Saisiyat therefore cannot be dissociated from the discourse-pragmatics of language use and an understanding of the nature of the word order change the language is currently undergoing.

A Discourse Explanation of the Transitivity Phenomena in Kavalan, Squliq, and Tsou

In this study, we investigate the discourse-functional properties of the extended intransitive clause (EIC) in relation to other clause types in three Formosan languages: Tsou, Kavalan, and Squliq. We offer evidence, based on tracking behavior of NPs, to show that case-marking in EICs is motivated by a core/oblique distinction, and that the core/oblique distinction arises in a systematic way from recurrent patterns in discourse. The referents of the oblique-marked argument nominals in EICs in these languages are shown to be consistently much less likely to be tracked or to be continuous than either the nominative or the ergative argument of a nonactor voice clause. The data derived from investigating the tracking behavior of noun phrases suggest that the validity of a grammatical transitive/intransitive distinction in these languages is quite robust, and that the distinction can best be correctly discerned by examining the functioning of various argument nominals in discourse.