The phrase “qu le（去了）” in the Dong’an dialect of Hunan Province can appear in seven different situations to express the meaning of subjective large quantity, specifically, subjectively considered long distance, long time, large number, high degree, close relationship and emphatic tone. The origin of the subjective connotation of large quantity of “qu le” is closely related to the meaning “leaving” expressed by “qu（去）”. Leaving means an increase in distance beyond the inherent range, and “le（了）” is a modal word used as a reminder or emphasis, denoting a tone of reinforcement. This is consistent with the connotation of “beyond” and “increasing” implied by “qu”. This provides a semantic basis for “qu” to indicate the meaning of “subjective mass”. The “preposition + location theme + qu” word order provides syntactic position conditions for the cross-layered lexicalization of “qu le”. The semantic matching and syntactic positions are close together so that the two are eventually combined across layers and contribute to the generation of the connotation of subjective large quantity carried by “qu le”.

Movement analysis is a fundamental means by which similarities and differences between syntactically different yet semantically similar sentences can be properly captured and analyzed. Three types of movement at different dimensions of language can be identified: overt movement, covert movement, and scrambling. Overt movement takes place in overt syntax, covert movement in Logical Form, and scrambling perhaps in Phonetic Form. Different types of movement are motivated differently and are subject to different conditions. Overt movement takes place mainly to satisfy certain syntactic conditions such as Case requirement, covert movement is required when some semantic interpretations cannot be appropriately obtained otherwise. It is argued that scrambling at the level of Phonetic Form is motivated jointly by two pragmatic reasons of \[Hasty\] and \[Emphasis\]. It is demonstrated in this article that some well-known invented constructions and flexible word ordering phenomena can be recaptured and reinterpreted under the theoretical framework articulated, and these case studies of the Chinese language in turn make a significant contribution to the scrambling theory itself especially its theoretical status, motivations, and operation conditions.

The study of linguistic typology shows that there exists an evolution path from temporal category to conditional category in language. In fact, this evolution path can also be extended. At least in Chinese, there is such an evolutionary path from quantity category to temporal category, and then from temporal category to condition category, which is seldom perceived by researchers. In Chongqing dialect, the quantitative phrase  erhui  (二回) means “twice” or “the second time”. When the meaning of "two" as a numeral weakens,  erhui  is lexicalized to represent the general  meaning of "next time". In the time domain, if the time period is highlighted, the meaning of “next time” is changed to "later" of the time period. As erhui often occurs at the beginning of a complex sentence to express a supposition relationship, it is grammatically transformed into a conditional conjunction. The above evolution path is also found in other dialects such as Southwest Mandarin, Central Plains Mandarin, and is even found in English.

The phenomena of “same reality and different names” and “same name and different reality” between the standard language and dialects and among various dialects are common. It is a path to explore the causes of their formation through the combination of vertical and horizontal comparisons. Jiaozi (饺子) as an important noun, has many synchronic names. Diachronic investigation shows that all these names are the accumulation from different periods of time and different places. Before the Song Dynasty, it occurred as huntun (馄饨). In the Song and Jin dynasties, jiaozi/jiaoer (角子/角儿) with its southern pronunciation was found in the south and  bianshi (扁食) found in the north. During the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, the southern jiaozi/jiaoer moved northward, its southern phonological features undergoing changes in the northern dialects and began to take on the northern pronunciation as jiaozi/jiao’er (饺子/饺儿), which has eventually become a word in the common language. Although bianshi tended to move southward, it was always mainly used in the north. Shuijiao (水角) and jiaozi are in geographically complementary distribution due to different cooking methods. Inheritance of nomenclature, linguistic cognition and historical sound change affect the synchronic distribution of the name of jiaozi.

To explore the cognitive mechanism of phrasing in speaking Chinese as a second language, this study examines how learners employ their chunking capability to handle different types and lengths of Chinese sentences in oral production. Fifteen lower-level learners and fifteen higher-level learners from English-speaking countries participated in the sentence recall experiment, with another fifteen native speakers of Chinese as the baseline group. Pause rate and chunk size were calculated to assess participants’ Chinese oral fluency at the sentence level. Results show an increase of learners’ pause rate when the syntactic structure of a sentence becomes more complex, whereas under this cognitive-demanding situation, the increase of sentence length conversely boosts higher-level learners’ chunk size. Learners’ over-dependency on sentence length displays their inferior cognitive processing ability as compared to that of native speakers in Chinese oral production. This can be improved with the use of compressed chunking strategy by adjusting the size of chunks according to the syntactic structure and the length of a sentence rather than producing every sentence with the same size of chunks.

This paper investigates the formation and development of the counter-factual usage of “yiwei (以为)” and “renwei (认为)” based on the large-scale corpus and demonstrates that the meaning of counter-factuality is an implicature of yiwei which is a noncounterfactual verb when used to express personal opinions and ask for information. The verb renwei is basically non-factual, and the counter-factual usage is only found in particular contexts. The realization condition of the counter-factual usage of yiwei and renwei first occurs in narrative discourse; and subsequently co-occur with some other counter-factual prompts, including negative evaluation, counter-expectation markers, and sentences that overtly express facts. With the conventionalization of the counterfactual usage, yiwei often collocates with “zi (自)”, and the object clause where they occur mainly represents counter-factuality. Besides, the verb yiwei often co-occurs with “ni (你)” and often occurs in rhetorical questions.

本文尝试从外部接触和内部结构相结合的角度来分析皖南泾县宣州吴语影母非开口平声字归上这一典型的由内外因共同作用导致的音变现象。研究认为该音变的外因是与明清官话标准音阴平调值趋同；音变内因是方言阴阳平调值接近，当在非开口呼前，奉、微、疑、喻、匣等浊声母变为零声母，与影母字声韵相同时，阴阳平字就有混同的趋势，为保持阴阳平字的区别这一汉语方言中的强势规则，从而推动影母非开口平声字的声调发生变化。

This paper studies the evolution of the cleft sentence “shi (是)…de (的)” in Chinese from the perspective of  constructionalization. The path of its constructionalization is as follows. In the Late Tang and Five, “shi (是)” and “di (底)”which is the predecessor of “de (的)” cooccur in the structures “shi…di + noun” and “shi…di”. By the Song Dynasty, the structure “shi…di + noun ” appears in large numbers, and at the same time the structure “shi…de” has widely developed. By the middle of the Yuan Dynasty, some “shi…de + noun” structures dropped out the nouns that function as the subject of the patient objects, which in turn are copied to the beginning of the sentence to act as topics, forming the topic sentence “topic + shi …de ”. By the Ming Dynasty, the cleft sentence “shi…de” has formally taken shape. In this process, “shi” evolved from a demonstrative pronoun to a copula that expresses judgment, and finally evolved into a cleft marker that expresses emphasis. On the other hand, the structural auxiliary “de” functioning as a modification marker has evolved from a cleft mark together with “shi”. The most fundamental feature of the formation of cleft sentence of “shi” is the change of semantic elements and syntactic combinations of “shi” and “de” and the absorption of construction, the most important mechanism of which is reanalysis and the most basic motivation is efficiency induced.

It is a common phenomenon that characters with voiceless, voiced sonorant entering tone are pronounced as “yinping” tone with a voiceless consonant and “yangping” tone with a voiced consonant in Henan Zhongyuan Mandarin, which can be divided into the Gushi type and the Shangcai type. This bitonality is found on characters either occurring alone or co-occurring with other characters in the Gushi type, but is is found only on characters that co-occur with other characters in the Shangcai type. Given the facts above, the Shangcai type is essentially a kind of tone sandhi, whereas the Gushi type is the discrete phonetic change. Moreover, this paper also helps to reveal the truth of the tone sandhi of “yi ”(一), “qi” (七), “ba” (八) and “bu” (不) in Beijing dialect.

The tone system of Qinlong dialect of Zhongyuan Mandarin in southern Shaanxi Province shows obvious contact characteristics affected by Sichuan-Guizhou dialect of Southwest Mandarin. The citation tones have changedI appearing to be mixed and unstable. The attribution of some ancient Rusheng characters have also changed. Tone sandhi and lexical tone are closely related to the citation tone, showing greater inclusiveness, inheritance and variation coexist. The phonological combination of two-character tone is relatively loose. The coexistence of different levels of tone values and the mutation result in the drift, sharing and straddling of sandhi tones. Due to the mixing of the lexical tone, tone of first syllable and lexical tone pattern, disyllabic lexical tone which has strong solidification and retains more characteristics of Qinlong dialect also shows the drift, sharing and straddling of lexical tone.

The first-hand recording materials of the 45 dialect tone systems of Wuzhou and Chuqu Wu are used to explore the tonal pattern and its evolution path. The vital sound change of the Southwest Wu lies in the phonation variation and various contours appearing on the tones. There are two major changes: 70% of the tone systems in Southwest Wu dialects lose phonation type, which is the key characteristics of Wu language, thus losing the lower registers; nine tone systems proliferated higher register, accounting 20% of the total. Various contour tones perform in 1) dipping tones, concave falling tones, and convex rising tones appearing frequently; 2) newly discovered quadruple contrast with contour tones: Three dipping tones and one high convex rising tone; 3) as an extreme example, there are quadruple contrasts with four dipping tones in two dialects. The typological criteria, rather than the previous phonemic or feature criteria, should be used to determine the tone pattern, and the weight of which has also been discussed.

The six continuous markers of Miao’s Chinese dialect in the region of Hunan Guangxi border all retain the usages of resultative and perfective on the synchronic level, resulting in a series of markers that centering on demonstrating the dual paths in “incomplete” grammaticalization. These markers preserve the evolutionary chain for the development of resultative components to both perfective and continuous aspects, which further demonstrates that dual paths of grammaticalization are characteristic of more general typological significance. The evolution pattern of “qi (起)” reveals the possibility of the dual paths of grammaticalization and the formation of the perfective aspect and supplements the classic evolution path of the perfective proposed by Bybee, which proves that not only the resultative aspect, but also the perfective aspect can evolve into both the perfective and continuous aspects simultaneously, forming the grammaticalization dual paths.

The types of basic word order of positive-negative interrogative sentence in Tujia are VP-Conj-V-neg and VP-Vcw-Conj-VP-Vcwneg. It is different from other languages in the Sino-Tibetan language family, in that the negative element at the end of a sentence is a prominent feature of its word order, which follows Tujia’s own grammatical rules, namely, negative adverbs and auxiliary verbs are placed after the verbs or adjectives. The reduplicated positive-negative interrogative sentences formed by negative verbs take the form of AAB, which in turn is resulted from the component ellipsis of the VP-Conj-Vneg positive-negative interrogative sentence formed by negative verbs. The formation of positive-negative interrogative sentence in the form of “VP-thai35” is brought about by the considerable influence of the Chinese language under close contacts between the Tujia people and Han people. It is the result of Tujia language copying of the “V没有” positive-negative interrogative syntactic structure from the local Chinese dialect，the emergence of which not only expands the use of “thai35没有” in Tujia, but also represents the trend of the development of positive-negative interrogative sentence in Tujia, namely, to adopt relatively simple question form to express inquiry.

Type \[\] is the mingling similarities of hekou Zhi set and Jian set at the third or fourth division and the one in southern Shaanxi can be divided into two according to different causes, immigration type and contact type. The immigration type is Jianghuai Mandarin and Dialect Gan that moved into southern Shaanxi from Hubei, Anhui and Hunan during the reign of Qianjia in Qing Dynasty, and the contact type is formed by further contact and superposition between the immigration type and the Zhongyuan Mandarin or Southwestern Mandarin in southern Shanxi. Taking Type \[\] in southern Shanxi as an example, this paper analyzes the mechanism of immigration type and contact type, and explains the importance of spatial migration and dialect contact in the distribution and formation of regional types, and it is concluded that the similarity of cross regional dialect types is the result of historical immigrant spatial migration, while the similarity of dialect types in the same region is the result of different dialect contact and conversion.

In this paper, we refer to the theory of “initial base” found in the analysis of harmonic sounds in the ancient sound system, and put forward the notion of “basic initial forms” in Chinese, which is used to describe the collocation of initials in disyllabic compounds. The “basic initials” correspond to the core part which is preserved after we eliminate the nuances in pronunciation between the first and second syllables of a disyllabic compound. Taking the chachi (差池) word family as an example, this paper examines its basic initial and semantic meanings, in order to reflect on the related cases found in ancient texts. In the specific part of the textual research, the basic initials forms and core meanings of the chachi word family serving as reference point, we examine the basic initials and semantic meanings of the compounds xichi (徙弛),  xiyi (徙迤), shachi (沙池), qianyan (迁延), qunxun (逡巡/循),  qichi (栖迟),  shasui (莎随), and determine that they all belong to the chachi word family. Taking into account the word xi/sha attested in the Chu manuscripts of the Warring States Period and also the differences in word usage after the Western Han Dynasty, it is considered that the words  xi/sha correspond to xi  and  sha  in the three compounds xichi ,  xiyi ,  shachi , which are in fact graphic variants of  chachi . This article is an attempt to combine the "basic initials" theory with word usage, in order to show the conjunctions between disyllabic compounds of one same word family and determine their mutual relationship.

This paper attempts to reexamine the functions of “ze”（则） based on the quotations of its usage from ancient books such as "Zuo Zhuan"（左传） and demonstrates a grammatical fact that is often ignored or misunderstood, namely, the word “ze” often functions as a modal adverb when it occurs between the subject and predicate. In a single-clause sentence or a coordinate compound sentence, “ze” is used to emphasize the preceding subject, and in a modificatory complex sentence, “ze” is used to emphasize the subject-predicate structure of the clause where it is located. The modality adverb functions as a focus marker.

Both the resultative and complement markers can be subcategorized in order to establish diverse evolutionary relationships. The resultative can be broken down into three usages: Achieved resultative, acted resultative and stative resultative. Complement markers can be broken down into three categories: Descriptive complement markers, causative complement markers and potential complement markers. Stative resultatives are sources of descriptive complement markers, which is mainly reflected in the evolution of t44of Dali Bai language and “de” of Dali Chinese dialect and early modern Chinese; Achieved resultatives are sources of causative complement markers and potential complement markers, which is mainly reflected in the evolution of “de” of Dali Chinese dialect and early modern Chinese. The grammatical morphemes of different languages are imbalanced in the configuration of relevant functions. The combination of the studies of minority nationality languages, Chinese dialects and early modern Chinese can clarify the classification of functions and further clarify the evolutionary relationships between different functions.

Employing ERP technology, this study investigates the semantic processing mechanism underlying the antecedent of Chinese counterfactual conditionals, via manipulating the degree of consistency between contextual information and semantic information in Chinese counterfactual conditionals and causal conditionals. The results showed that: 1) at the departure point of the conditionals, as a hypothetical conjunctive, “yaoshi” evoked larger P3a and P600 responses than “yinwei”; 2) verbs inconsistent with context incurred a larger P600 amplitude; 3) at the end of the antecedent, in contrast to the effect of easing integration of the consistent noun in causal conditionals, no N400 difference between consistent and inconsistent nouns in counterfactual conditionals was observed. These results reveal that the processing of semantic information in the antecedent of Chinese counterfactual conditionals could be separated into three stages: Firstly, as a counterfactual ingredient, the hypothetical conjunctive “yaoshi” triggeres the construction of counterfactual context. In turn, the readers construct and process the counterfactual representation. Subsequently, the readers construct the factual representation and process the counterfactual representation and the factual representation simultaneously. Our research supports and expands the dualrepresentation accounts for counterfactuals.

Based on the Chinese translated Buddhist scriptures from the Eastern Han to Wei Jin and the Southern-Northern dynasties, and adopted the view of the semantic continuity in contexts for grammaticalization, the paper discusses the various usages of adverb of “zhuǎn” in the Middle Chinese period and its grammaticalization process. In this period, “zhuǎn” as an adverb demonstrates three usages: degree adverbs, manner adverbs and modal adverbs, all of which are evolved from the verb “zhuǎn ” indicating the meaning of “change”. The new grammatical functions are finally formed in the “transition environments” through “bridge context”. The “transition environments” can be figured out through certain formal standards. This paper also discusses the temporal adverbs of “ zhuǎnfù” “zhuǎnbiàn” “zhuǎngèng”, which are basically found in the Buddhist scriptures. The paper points out that these adverbs come from errors of acquisition of the foreign Buddhist monks (bilingual practitioners) who are not familiar with Chinese.

In order to observe the relationship between the intonation patterns and their functions of interjections as responses, 192 pairs of conversations were synthesized by combining 4 kinds of sentences of different sentence types and 4 kinds of interjection response words (ɑ、ɑｉ、ｏ、ｅｎ) loaded with different intonations to observe the matching degrees between the types of the former sentences and the responses of the latter sentence in the Chinese conversation sequences, as well as the functional orientations of the interjections in different intonations. It is found that，the actual behavior types inferred from the response function selection results of the latter sentences are roughly consistent with the function types of the former sentences, but it also highlights the asymmetry of the former sentences in forms and functions. Respondents’ choice of interjection and intonation affected subjects’ choice of response function at the same time, and the influence of intonation was more obvious. The rising or falling intonations can realize the basic distinction of positive or negative response functions, and the functions of complex intonation such as rising-falling and falling-rising are mainly determined by the rising or falling trend of the back part of the curve.

The paper examines the postverbal constraint in Chinese and the preverbal constraint in Mande languages, i.e., the number of constituents that follow the verb in Chinese and that precede the verb in the Mande languages, respectively, is limited, exhibiting a different word order type than ordinary SVO and SOV. Modern Standard Mandarin contains a few exceptions to the postverbal constraint, but their usage is restricted. The postverbal/preverbal constraint can be categorized as “quantitatively constrained word order”, in contrast to “quality-based word order” and “position-based word order”. The introduction of quantitatively constrained word order which is differentiated from the other two types of word order would enrich our understanding of the word order typology.

“To play” is a universal basic concept in various languages. The verb meaning “to play” in the Hakka dialect in Ningdu has been recorded as \[ho\]、\[hui\]、\[xi\]、\[vi\]、\[vi\], and \[fei\], also as the dissyllabic \[huai tshau\]、\[fei tshau\]. According to the history of the Chinese language and synchronic study of various dialects, this word should be written as “huai” (坏) and “huaichao” (坏钞), evolving from “huaichao” (坏钞) (“to pay the expense”) in the early Mandarin. The verb meaning “to play” in Fuguang cluster of Gan dialect, which was written as “wei” (猥), may be written as “huai”, too, because they are practically of the same word. It shows the close relatioship of the Ningdu Shicheng cluster of Hakka dialect and Gan dialect.

After combing the unearthed documents, the paper observes that the characters  “lü” (履) and “ju” (屦) were used interchangeably and that they were also written as a number of variant forms during the Warring States Period. Under the influence of policy of Uniformity of Script, this problem was solved respectively during the period of the Qin dynasty. According to the investigation of unearthed and handed down documents from the pre-Qin to the early Western Han dynasty, the character ju was eventually replaced by “lü” and “lü” became a commonly used word for “shoes” no later than the Qin dynasty, resulting from the policy of Uniformity of Script. This case shows that policy of Uniformity of Script did have an important impact on the change of Chinese words.

Language typology mainly defines and describes the main word classes in different languages according to cross-linguistic morphological and syntactic criteria. Through the systematic investigation of different morphosyntactic parameters, adjectives of Turkic languages has typical morphosyntactic features that are different from nouns and verbs, and can be recognized as an independent word class. The typical adjective A1 mainly encodes the core attribute meaning, which has both modifier and declarative functions, while the derived adjective A2 mainly encodes the edge attribute meaning, and the modifier function is more prominent than the declarative function. The correlation between the formation of adjectives and their syntactic functions reflects the heterogeneity of the word class in agglutinative language. The attribute meaning is an important criterion to exclude some marginal word class members. The gradual weakening of the attribute meaning determines the dissociative state of some non-morphologic small words in the adjective-verb continuum.

From the synchronic perspective, the distribution of consonant endings is not balanced in the Sino-Tibetan languages. From the diachronic perspective, consonant ending is a phonetic phenomenon in earlier period. The present distribution is the result of evolution of consonant endings.  Based on the data of consonant endings in 95 Sino-Tibetan Languages collected within the territory of China, this paper proposes a number of types and universals of these endings, including the combination types and commonness between the consonant endings and vowel, and explores the universals of the sound change of consonant endings.

“Hai”（还） is used as an adverb and sentencefinal modal particle which can be named “hai1” and “hai2” respectively in Chaozhou Min dialect. “Hai2” can form the structure “XP1+hai2”.“Hai2” has two functions including: （a） as particles in rhetorical questions （“hai2a”）; （b）as affirmative particles （“hai2b”）. The usage of “hai2” developed from “hai1” through syntactic ellipsis and reanalysis. Transformation of the structure results in the focus of the semantic scope of hai to move forward and accordingly the semantic content changes, which leads to the evolution of “hai2a”＞“hai2b”.

[本刊编辑部按] 在《语言科学》创刊一周年之际，本刊曾推出《〈语言科学〉刊发论文的学术规范》一文。此后每年，为加强学风建设，保障学术自由，促进学术交流、学术积累和学术创新，规范语言科学研究工作，《语言科学》都会重新发表《规范》的修订版，与学界同仁共勉。本文的撰述是《语言科学》编辑部为致力于语言学论文写作和发表过程的学术规范所做的一种尝试；也有增加本刊编辑过程的透明度，敬请广大读者与作者加强对本刊工作监督之意。学术规范是一项长期的制度建设，希望我们大家共同遵守，共同推动语言学学术规范的建设。由于这方面的学术规范还没有一个统一的标准，本文尚存在不少问题，欢迎读者们提出进一步的建议。本文的撰写参阅了国际上一些有影响的刊物的规范与通行的标准，还吸收了学术界的一些研究成果。

Irregular splits of Qusheng tone into Yinping and Yangping tones is found in Pingdu-type dialects in Shandong province. This article pointed out that these dialects generally used to distinguish between Yinqu and Yangqu in history after the analysis of the tone sandhi preceding neutral-toned syllables and reconstructs the ancient tonal values of Pingdu-type dialects as Yinping*21, Yangping*55,  Shangsheng*213, Yinqu*31, Yangqu*42. The situation of irregular tonal splits of Qusheng in modern Pingdu-type dialects are resulted from the competing change between *55>42>31and *31>42.

Hengtu（横图） is adapted on the basis of Qiyun Shebiao（切韵射标） by adding repeated characters with different tones. The actual phonetic characteristics of Qieyun Shebiao  are consistent with those of  Shuwen Yinyi Biankao Sibian  （书文音义便考私编）. Based on the Nanjing mandarin, Shuwen Yinyi Biankao Sibian is an rhyme book with the feature of dengyun（等韵）, which is revised to the phonology of Hongwu ZhengYun（洪武正韵）. It creates a terminology system to distinguish the small rhymes with the same initial and different pronunciation in the same rhyme by names of hu（呼）, and at the same time, it retains the differences in the origin of each rhyme and character. [WTBX]Qieyun Shebiao is a kind of rhyme table rearranging the rhymes in Shuwen Yinyi Biankao Sibian according to the phonological origin of Shiyun(诗韵) in the form of traditional rhyme chart with 36 initials and the unit of finals. Its compiling style, the structure of rhyme system, notes to rhyme chart, the names of hu, arrangement of characters and even the method of pronunciation are all influenced by Shuwen Yinyi Biankao Sibian. Shebiao develops and perfects names of hu, and takes hu as a term to distinguish final features, thus Chinese four kind of hu are finalized. Hunhu(混呼) is a special way of compiling, which refers to the mixing of different finals or characters in different finals in Shebiao. The note at the end of rhyme tables in Shebiao is an analysis of the difference between the actual voice and rhyme chart voice. Combing the relationship between Hengtu, Qieyun Shebiao and Shuwen Yinyi Biankao Sibian is of great significance to have an objective and accurate understanding of the theoretical source, compilation features, phonological basis and phonetic nature of Hengtu, and to clarify the development of the rhyme theory of  Hengtu series from the source.

The present research describes the bridging repetition in Liangshan Yi, sometimes also known as tail-head linkage. It is a narrative phenomenon beyond the level of the clause and a discourse pattern of high frequency. The related phenomena include multi-verb construction, clause-chaining, and subordination. The present study proposes four defining features of bridging repetition in Liangshan Yi. The core requirement is for the bridging clause to repeat the complete or partial predicate of the reference clause, including its arguments. It is also found that the repetition in Liangshan Yi must cover the verb(s) of semantic head. After examining the folk stories, four methods of repetition are identified, viz. simple copy, modification of verbs of non-semantic head, structural simplification and structural expansion. They can act, either individually or interactively, to produce three kinds of repetition results. The main functions of the bridging repetition are to maintain the discourse cohesion, carry forward the event line, and reduce the workload of information processing for both narrators and hearers under the changing oral context. Bridging repetition is a prevalent construction in languages of the world, such as Papuan languages and Tibeto-Burman languages. The common feature shared by those speech communities is that they have either no writing writings at all, or a highly confined writing system which has not been mastered by the ordinary ethnic speakers. Finally, the present research presents the different distributions of bridging repetition in written stories and oral stories of Liangshan Yi.

Based on the ERP technology and choosing “RP te le”, NP1 and NP2 as the keywords, this study explores the process of interaction between the V/Nv and the constructional meaning during the comprehension of the three types of Chinese double-object sentences (CDO), covering the normal sentences in which trivalent verbs are used as the predicate, coerced sentences in which nouns relevant to the meaning of “transmission” are used as verbs and incoercible sentences in which nouns irrelevant to the meaning of “transmission” are used as verbs. The results of the ERP experiment show that after “hat afle” and NP1, the N400 and P600 between the coerced sentences and incoercible sentences are not significantly different. During NP2 397-709 ms, Sustained Anterior Negativity (SAN) evoked by the three types of sentences respectively is significantly different: SAN evoked by the incoercible sentences is the largest, while SAN evoked by the normal is the smallest. As the three types V/Nv have different relations with the CDO constructional meaning, this result shows the involvement of constructional meaning in sentence semantic integration. During NP2 718-782 ms, the incoercible sentences evoke the largest late negativity (LN), which is significantly different from the LN of the normal and coerced sentences. This observation indicates that the normal and coerced sentences rather than the incoercible sentences bring about the semantic integration. From the processing of the whole CDO, the differences resulted from the processing of incoercible and coerced sentences after NP2 are mainly caused by the two types of Nvs having different relation with the CDO constructional meaning. The ERP results have provided evidence for the existence of CDO constructional meaning independent of the verb. Constructional coercion can be successful as long as the semantic characteristics of lexical items match the constructional meaning.

The paper describes the syntactic distribution of prepositional topic markers “yige” （一个） and “nige”（你个） in Xinhua dialect. It shows that, like the topic markers in Japanese, Korean and other languages, prepositional topic markers in Xinhua dialect do not have the occurrence constraints on sentence types. According to grammaticalization theory, the paper holds that topic markers “yige” and “nige” are derived from the demonstratives “yige” and “nige” respectively, so they are influenced by the phenomenon of “semantic retention”. Due to the difference of time distance, space distance and psychological distance between the object of the topic and the speaker, “yige” and “nige” are obviously different in the occurrence and distribution. 

The superposition of complex spatiotemporal layers are generally considered to be the main mechanism of variation triggered by language contact. Based on the analysis of the complex matching phenomenon of the sibilant initials in Mosha Dai, we argue that the dynamic matching rules and their joint action are the important causes of variation. The dynamic matching rules include: The projection of internal evolutionary stages onto the external layer, the projection of the target language onto the external layer, the constraint of internal phonological rules onto the external layer, the transformation-analogy rules caused by matching residues, and the joint action between the rules.

“mi”(咪) is a common negative adverb in Guangzhou dialect that expresses prohibition or dissuasion. According to the dialect survey data and the historical literature of the dialect, it is proved that the forbidding words “mi” in Guangzhou dialect is a combination of the negative structure “msi” (唔使) from both the phonological and semantic aspects. “mi” and “si” in the negative structure “msi” used to be pronounced as a yinshang tone. The current  yangshang reading is a tone adjustment based on the the voiced nasal features of its initial consonant; “msi” was historically used usage of  to mean necessity negation or prohibitive negation. The abbreviation of “msi” to “mi” is realized in prohibitive imperative sentences, and the abbreviated “mi” inherits the prohibitive negation of “msi”.

Suihan Yinyi (随函音义) of  Qishazang (碛砂藏) was created in the early Song Dynasty. In this book, except for a few special cases, more than 90% of the Qiexiazi (切下字) were improved, which were to spell the finals of the characters with initials in the Jing  (精) or Zhuang (庄) group and Zhishe (止摄) opening-mouth vowels. Further more, these characters were completely not used as Qiexiazi to spell the other characters, which reflects that the Zisi rhyme (甾思韵) had emerged independently. The nature of the Zisi  rhyme is an apical vowel, including two conditional variants  and  respectively following the initials in the Jing and Zhuang  group. The Zisi rhyme further developed into the Zi (赀) rhyme of Yunhui (韵会), and its evolution path was different from the Zhisi rhyme (支思韵) of  Zhongyuan Yinyun (中原音韵).

From the perspective of pragmatic tolerance, this study investigates L1-Mandarin Chinese L2-English speakers’ derivation of scalar implicatures, with a focus on L2 speakers’ pragmatic tolerance when facing a violation of pragmatic principle. Results from a graded judgment task show that L2 speakers have native-like pragmatic tolerance of underinformative sentences. More importantly, this pragmatic tolerance does not differ between L2 speakers’ native and second languages. This study aims to provide insight for experimental design in semantics-pragmatics research, as well as for second language acquisition of scalar implicatures.

The voiced obstruent initials had become devoiced in Jiaotai Yun （交泰韵）, a rhyme dictionary in the Ming dynasty. By statistically analyzing the sounds of syllables with voiced stops and affrications in this dictionary, and also referring to the notes on the use and sinigraphic spelling（反切）, we conclude that the ancient words in uneven tones with voiced stop and affrication initials had become unaspirated initials around Bian-Luo（汴洛） area in the 17th century. The various ways that Lü Kun（吕坤） made to reconcile speech sounds showed that Lü respected the linguistic facts on the one hand and the outdated phonological theory could no longer perfectly explain the dynamic change of language on the other. The devoicing manners of ancient voiced obstruent initials in Jiaotai Yun include aspiration in even tones and unaspiration in uneven tones.