There are three forms in Hebi dialect corresponding to the Mandarin Chinese particle “l （了）”“l u”“l  ” and “l Ａ ”. The word “l u”represents three grammatical meanings: “action completion or result achievement” , “time mark”, and “conditional mark”. The word “l  ” represents two grammatical meanings: “completion of action process or change process” and “completion of the action and continuity of the state” ; The word “l Ａ ” means three meanings: “completion of the event” “realization of the new situation” , and the subjective tone. Among them, the usage of “l u” and “l  ” is roughly equivalent to “了₁” and “l Ａ ” is roughly equivalent to “了₂”. This paper describes and analyzes the syntactic usage of “l u” “l  ” and “l Ａ ” in Hebi dialect, compares the corresponding forms with those in related dialects in Henan, Shanxi and Hebei provinces and sums up the distribution types of the corresponding forms in different dialects and the historical relationship for their non-synchronous development.

The possessive can be interpreted as agent inside a DP but a noun in noun-incorporation is limited to the theme reading. While each fact has been analyzed in the literature, their contrast is yet to receive due attention. In fact, no coherent account can be given to the contrast within the current theoretical framework whether one regards head-movement as the exclusive means for word-formation or takes words to be formed independently of syntax. The proposed solution consists of two components: a) Integrate the strengths of the syntactic and lexicalist models by appreciating the fact that direct merger of word-internal components is inevitable in every version of syntactic word-formation. b) Realize that the θ-criterion is the only licensing principle when syntax merges two heads to produce a new head. It is further shown that the means for θ-saturation must include θ-composition.

Research on nominalization generally suggests that nominalization is a process of transforming non-nominal constituents into nominal ones, overlooking the fact that the inputs of nominalization can also be nominal constituents. Zhu(1961, 1966, 1982) pointed out that the nominalizer “de” （的） in Mandarin Chinese can also apply to nominal constituents, this view has not gained widespread acceptance. Based on this situation, this paper aims to highlight the long-ignored phenomenon of nominal-based nominalization, clarifying that the nominal-based nominalization structure in Modern Chinese is “NP de,” providing rationales for nominal-based nominalization and the “NP de” as a nominalized structure from both cross-linguistic and diachronic perspectives. Acknowledging “NP de” as a nominalized structure allows for a unified treatment of “de” in “VP/AP/NP de” as a nominalizer, meaning that the de-modifiers in nominal modifier-head constructions are nominal in nature. That modifiers are nominal constituents is a typological phenomenon that can be supported across languages and Chinese dialects.

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。

Compared to the voluminous literature of sound change and variation across speakers and generations, much less is understood about change and variation within individuals across the lifespan. Based on the acoustic experimental data of 2010 and 2020 from 4 participants, this study reports an exploratory analysis of the acoustic characteristics of tonal variation of Chongqing Mandarin from real time perspective. The longitudinal results suggest that individual differences are systematically associated with the developmental trajectories of individual adults.

Based on evidence from modern spoken Chinese, this paper explores the phenomenon of constructional differentiation in the disposal construction. Our investigation reveals that since the Qing Dynasty, the disposal construction has differentiated into four sub-constructions, each with distinct semantic functions and formal markers: 1) The “ba” construction, which still expresses various semantic types of the disposal construction, including handling, causation, transfer, treating as, and naming; 2) The “gei” construction, primarily used to express handling and causation; 3) The “na” construction, mainly expressing treating as; 4) The guan construction, exclusively expressing naming. The latter three constructions all derive from the base “ba” construction. Although they partially overlap with the “ba” construction in function, their divisions of labor is quite clear. This study not only fills a gap in the research on the history of Chinese grammar and modern Chinese syntax but also contributes to the theoretical development of Construction Grammar.

The formation and evolution of syntactic structures are constrained by language typology. In the Sino-Tibetan language family, the Hani language possesses a unique reduplicative modifier structure (RMS) that is frequently used and has distinctive features not found in other Sino-Tibetan languages. This paper takes the Akha dialect of Hani  (hereinafter referred to as “Akha”) as the object of study, describes the synchronic characteristics of its RMS in depth, and further considers the formation of this structure. The main features of this structure are: tetrasyllabicity, reduplication, modifier relationship, and tonal marking. The prosody mainly consists of three types: the binomial rhythm, the overlapping law, and the tonal variation law, and is not governed by the prosody of alliteration and rhyme; the choice between the initial or final syllable of a noun for reduplication depends on semantic conditions; whether tetrasyllables can be reduced to disyllables depends on semantic clarity and frequency of the word’s usage.

The character “  ” (jia) in the Wangshan Chu bamboo slips was originally interpreted as “  ” (jia) or “  ” (shi). According to the common format and textual examples of Chu divination slips, “ ” (jia) should be interpreted as “  ” (jia), which is a variant of the character “  ” (jia). The character “ / ” (fa) in the Chu script was previously interpreted as a complex form of “刑” (xing), but the exact example in the newly released Tsinghua bamboo slips “《叁不韦》” (San Bu Wei) can prove that it should be interpreted as “罚” (fa). Explaining “  ” (jia) as “  ]” (jia) and “ / ” (fa) as “罚” (fa), their formation principles should both be in the context of vocabulary bisyllablization, where the components of these characters are replaced by another word with similar or related meanings due to the influence of semantic agglomeration. In the case of “ ” (jia), the character “家”  (jia) in the compound was replaced by “室” (shi) in the context of the text, while in the case of “ / ” (fa)，the character “  ” (fa) in the compound was temporarily replaced by “型/刑” (xing). This special structural phenomenon can be regarded as the “synonymous substitution” between the internal components of Chu script.

We present a new account in this paper on the view that the nominalized construction NP-de-VP in Chinese structurally consists of an inner verbal core and an outer nominal functional shell. The main arguments are as follows: 1) The possessive Case form of “NP-de” in the construction granted, it then has to be acknowledged that the construction contains a (null) D projection, which means that the construction undergoes nominalization and has an outer nominal functional structure. 2) The inner verbal structure involved in the nominalization canonically is the thematic layer VP/vP/VoiceP, though in limited cases, the verbal core is seen to be larger such that it may also be a ModP, the lowest projection within the INFL system by a dynamic root modal. 3) The outer nominal configuration is DP that may or may not be enriched by the projections from the light noun, depending on whether the situation denoted by the VP part of the construction receives some individuation/quantification reading or not. The light noun category may be realized as a genuine classifier or potentially instrumental in quantifying over uncountable things, and its role in nominalization is both semantic and syntactic. 4) The possessor NP in the construction undergoes some syntactic movement when DP lacks the nP content but it is base-generated when nP is included in DP, and in the latter situation it serves as the controller of the empty subject or the null object contained in the thematic structure. 5) The “de” (的) element does not act as the functional head of the entire construction, nor does it form the head of the “NP-de” part of the construction; it has no functional projection and serves only as the genitive case marker of the possessor NP in \[Spec, DP\].

We set four conditions to choose 400 disyllabic coordinative verbs in Mandarin Chinese (represented as XY) to investigate the (a)symmetry of X and Y. An annotation scheme is designed where semantic roles and lexical semantic features of the objects taken by X, Y and XY for all the 400 XYs are annotated. For each XY, after comparing the annotated results, we show that an H can be identified from X and Y, which behaves more like XY in terms of the annotated features of the objects. This means that the two roots X and Y inside each of the 400 XYs have unequal status in determining what kind of objects the XY takes and thus are asymmetrical. Based on statistical analyses of the annotation results, we find a generalization on the strategy of H identification: When the objects of X and those of Y have different numbers of semantic roles, the one whose objects have fewer semantic roles is more likely to be chosen as H. When the objects of X and those of Y have the same semantic roles, the identification of H is correlated with the similarity between the lexical semantics of X and that of Y. For an XY whose X and Y are more dissimilar in lexical semantics, the root with fewer annotated lexical semantic features is more likely to be identified as H. We provide an account for the generalization from the perspective of semantic composition, which is based on the fact that XYs came from coordinative phrases in history. We also provide an acoount for the XYs that do not conform to the generalization.

Starting from the conceptual structure of question and answer acts, this paper illustrates that due to the prominence of the epistemic status of speakers' experiential dimension (for example: I don’t understand; I want to know), relevant epistemic verbs and nouns can independently put up the umbrella of questions by replacing and overriding the interrogative verbs, and thereby licensing different interrogative forms. Furthermore, from the perspective of concept-driven language production and macro-and-micro language planning, it explains why the licensers of interrogative forms can distribute across grammatical units (e.g. words and phrases) and categories (e.g. verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and conjunctives), and why interrogative forms can freely appear and disappear within the predicate-object constructions introduced by the epistemic verb and property noun.

This paper discusses the “verb+bare regular noun object” structure in Chinese. In Tiantai dialect, if a XP is a functional maximal projection or the complement of a functional head, its left side will align with the edge of the phrasal tone sandhi domain. Whether the verb undergoes tone sandhi or not corresponds to the status of NP or DP of the bare noun object among expressions consisted of monosyllabic verb and mono-/bi-syllabic object, we conclude based on which that one essential condition of being “V+NP”/pseudo noun incorporation is its denotation’s being basic level, and that both the clearness of the potential reference and the animacy of the object influence the actual distributions of these two types. The theoretical implications are provided also. The concepts of (non) directly-concatenated constructions are discussed finally.

在明清闽南方言戏文中，存在一个多功能形式“年”。文章根据其语音及语法表现，确定其本字为“然”。“年（然）”除了继承古代汉语的性状/方式义语素、形容词附缀、比况助词等用法之外，在闽南方言中还发生了创新性演变，当其处于句末回指相邻前文时演变为表提示语气的句末语气词，当其处于动词与宾语之间时演变为完整体标记；另外，结果小句“是/做侢年”通过二次省缩演变为假设疑问语气词。

This paper distinguishes qualitative adjectives in Pre-modern Chinese into two subcategories: substance adjectives and event adjectives, and explores the differences between the two subclasses from four aspects: adverbial, attributive, result complement and reduplication. The paper holds that the distinction between these two subclasses is due to the fact that, as adjectives are verbal expressions of attribute values, some of the properties described by them refer to people or things, while others refer to actions, qualities or states. The difference arises when an adjective and the host of the property it describes directly co-appear syntactically: some adjectives state nominal components, while others state verbal components, and the feature of Chinese adjectives occurring as verbal subjects allows the latter to be judged as adjectives. The distinction between the two subclasses is of great significance and can provide new ideas for solving some difficult problems.

Evidences from historical documents and modern dialects both support the view that the the Middle Chinese (MC) Zhi_-III(知_三) and Zhang(章) initial groups are different from the MC Zhi_-II (知_二) and Zhuang (庄) in the Wu dialects in the past several hundreds of years since the Ming Dynasty. The Zhi_-III and Zhang groups are pronounced as \[\], \[\] or \[ \] and the Zhi_-II and Zhuang groups as \[\]. Based on the materials such as Fanqie spellings in the rhyme book including Tongwen Beikao (同文备考), drama texts in the Ming Dynasty, the colloquial readings appeared in some word, and rounding of main vowels of the Zhi_-III and Zhang initial group in modern Wu, the early phonetic value of the Zhi_-III and Zhang initial groups should be reconstructed as . Furthermore, the phonetic stratum of the MC Zhuang initial group with the MC Yu (鱼) rhyme which is also shared by the words with the MC Ge (歌) rhyme in the Northern Wu is the remnant from northern Mandarin, the lingua franca during the Tang-Song Dynasties.

Characters from Zhi (知), and Zhuang (庄), and Zhang (章) initials of Chengdu Hakka dialect are pronounced as the “ts” group when preceding broad finals and as the “t” group when preceding fine finals. Some of the characters from Zhi (知) and Zhang (章) initials such as “Shi (十), Shi (湿), Zhi (侄). Zhi (直), Shi (实), Shi (食), Zhe (蛰), Shi (适), Zhi (织) ” of some Chengdu Hakka dialects are pronounced as the “t” group and can also be freely pronounced as the “ts” group. This phenomenon is related to the contact with Southwestern Mandarin and constrained by rules of internal phonological mergence and assimilation effect of rolled tongue vowels, rather than inherited from the phonological features of Min (闽), Yue (粤) and Gan (赣) Hakka dialects. This dialect evolution induced by contact occurred after the Hakka immigrants moved to Sichuan province. The “t” initial group of the Chengdu Hakka dialect emerged no later than the 1930s.

This paper offers a concise description of the derivation rules of the Huizong Secret Speech (HSS) in Anyang dialect, rules to embed new segments (incl. the standard form ai-k and its conditioned variants) in almost any monomorphemic monosyllable and thus break it into a disyllable. Evidence is found that the medial u of a monosyllable sides more with the initial (or onset) rather than the final (or rhyme) in phonological behavior. Some HSS disyllables are not derived from today’s but yesterday’s citation forms. Despite the universal value of the onset-rhyme division in Chinese syllable structural analysis, there is a typological contrast between the Chinese HSS and the English Pig Latin as surface representations of an underlying fundamental difference between the morpheme-wise monosyllabic Sino-Tibetan languages and the word-wise X-syllabic Indo-European languages. 

Mirativity has two aspects: Emotion event and emotion state. Emotion events refer to the new environment information that causes subject’s attention and emotion reaction, while the emotions state can be further deconstructed into two dimensions: Emotion valence (positive/negative evaluation) and emotion arousal (intensity of physiological/psychological activation). Both “yiwai” and “jingya” can be used to “translate” mirativity in Chinese: The noun form yiwai can denote emotion event, the adjective form yiwai can denote both emotion event and emotion state, while jingya can only denote emotion state, but jingya can characterizes stronger emotion arousal than yiwai. This study also investigates the relationship between counterexpectation emotion events and strong emotion state through two paradoxical structures: “yiwai but not jing” and “jing but not yiwai”. The former arises when an event deviates from expectations but fails to exceed the cognitive threshold required to trigger strong emotions, while the latter occurs when an event violates general-denoted expectations (e.g., societal norms) but aligns with individual-denoted expectations. These structures the interaction between the counterexpectation event and the subject’s cognitive schemata.  

It remains unclear in recent research how the “bi”（比） comparative construction in Modern Chinese started to take shape. This study identifies three stages of the bi comparative construction. In the first stage, from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese, the bi comparative construction began to emerge. The complex sentence “X+bi-verb (+yu) +Y, VP” evolved into a serial verb construction “X+bi-verb+Y (+wei) +VP.” Although bi still functioned as a verb during this period, it exhibited a syntactic and semantic structure similar to the comparative construction “X+bi-preposition+Y+A,” laying the foundation for the subsequent emergence of the bi comparative construction. In the second stage, during the Tang Dynasty, the serial verb construction “X+bi-verb+Y (+wei) +VP” evolved into three types of comparative patterns, including “X+bi-preposition+Y+A,” marking the grammaticalization of bi and the formation of the comparative construction. In the third stage, the further development of the bi comparative construction during the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties gave rise to three new patterns: including the “X+bi-preposition+Y+A (+de) +C” pattern. During the Ming Dynasty, the bi comparative construction is close to reach maturity. This pattern began to solidify by the Qing Dynasty.

The use of common nouns as adverbials is marked and subject to numerous constraints. The “Noun + Verb” adverbial-modifier construction predominantly follows a 2+2 syllabic pattern as its prosodic norm. The 1+1 pattern is unproductive, the 2+1 pattern is rare, and the 1+2 pattern is disfavored. The use of abstract nouns as adverbials is a modern development emerging since the May Fourth Movement. This Europeanized structure, influenced by translation, is primarily employed in formal written registers. The syllabic patterning of the “Noun + Verb” adverbial-modifier construction is shaped by register constraints. The 2+2 pattern serves as a prosodic means of expressing formal register in Chinese, aligning with the formal nature of this construction. Disyllabic abstract nouns are atypical nouns and represent a marked category; only marked nouns can exhibit marked syntactic functions, whereas monosyllabic nouns are restricted in their ability to function directly as adverbials. The 1+2 pattern in the “Noun + Verb” adverbial-modifier construction is virtually non-existent. The 1+1 pattern, as a bonded disyllabic unit, results from foot-based word formation.

Excavated and classical texts have systematically revealed that the characters “kai” and “qi”, representative verbs meaning “to open” in the Old Chinese, can refer “to inspect”. This article specifically demonstrates that the character “qi” in classical texts and bronze inscriptions of the West Zhou period simultaneously conveys the meaning of “to inspect”, and infers that other characters containing the “xi” phonetic component in Warring States bamboo slips are also used to record the same word. Furthermore, it reveals that characters “jian（[XC<SQS6.jpg>;%10%10]）”“jian（[XC<SQS5.jpg>;%13%14]）” and “jian（訮）” with “jian” as phonetic component on bamboo slips during Warring States, Qin and Han dynasties originally denoting “to inspect” also concurrently expresses the meaning of “to open”, arguing that these can corroborate with the character “kai” in classical texts which also concurrently expresses the meaning of “to inspect”. It discusses the relationship between the meanings of “to open” and “to inspect” and its mechanism and explores other cognate words with the meaning of “to inspect” which also denotes “to open” based on this mechanism.

Chinese plurality category can be classified into pivotal group (associative group), characteristic group, enumeration group, and emotional groups. Based on frequency statistics from real corpus, this article finds that “xie”“men” and “huo” in Chengdu dialect are not plural markers but pragmatic markers expressing stance-taking. The word “men” in Chengdu dialect marks pivotal group, used to classify people with similar stances based on a certain pivot, indicating the alliance relationship. Not until recently has “men” obtained the function of characteristic group and enumeration group influenced by the common language. Both “xie” and “huo” mark emotional group, used to classify groups that have a strong emotional impact on the speaker. The highfrequency usage of them is to modify personal nouns as discourse topics, highlighting the closeness feature. Both “xie” and “huo” have a tendency towards singularity, indicating that their pragmatic attributes can extend beyond the constraints of plurality.

The character previously interpreted as “儥” (yù) in ancient script materials actually consists of two distinct series of glyphs with significantly different formation, one being “儥” and the other “ ()”. There is no consensus in academia on how to analyze these two series of glyphs and whether they can be identified as the same word. Further exploration is necessary. Through the analysis of character formation, the article holds that the two characters “儥[” and “” used to record the word (鬻) do not have an evolutionary relationship in glyphs and should be classified into two series. The character “儥” should be analyzed as significative component “人” (rén) and phonetic component “”. The character “” should be analyzed as consisting of the radical “贝” (bèi) and the phonetic component “”. The character “” should be analyzed as consisting of the radical “贝” and phonetic component “”. The character “” should be analyzed as consisting of the radical “人” (ren) and phonetic component “” (a variant of ). Using the character “” (duī) as a phonetic symbol to record the word  (鬻) reflects the phonetic phenomenon of sound shifts between the “幽” (yōu) and “觉” ( jué) group and the “微” (wēi), “物” (wù) and “文” ( wén) group in Archaic Chinese.

There are two ways of expressing the concept of {dawn} in Chinese: the visual system and the spatial and temporal system. The visual system is mainly represented by the imagery of Chinese characters or be biphonized by juxtaposition and compounding. The category members of the spatial-temporal system can be classified into the three series of negativity, proximity and attainment. The word 黎明 (límíng) is a member of the attainment series in the spatial-temporal system, and its lexical pattern is "verb of terminality + word of point-of-time " The forms of邌 (lí)and 遲(zhì) were phonetic loan characters for the word 逮(dài), which means "to approach", often occurring as components of the words 邌明 and 遲明, which were later shortened as 黎明 around the period of the Jin Dynasty. The lexicalization of 黎明 was caused by the abridgement of the structure of the topic. 

In the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, some phrases like “chan mou ming”“chan ming”, etc., are found, specifically “chan wokao womu ming” as on the bronze ritual vessel Wunian Diaosheng Gui, “chan ming” as on the bronze ritual vessel Liunian Diaosheng Gui and “chancheng gongming” as on the bronze plate Baji Pan. There has been no consensus over the meaning of the character “chan” among relevant scholars. Now it seems that there is no need to reinterpret the character “chan”, which should be read as “chan”, encompassing both the meanings of walking on and following. “Chan mou ming” means to follow and fulfill someone’s command, which is equivalent to phrases like “cheng mou ming”,  “cheng mou ming” or “zhi mou ming”. Other phrases related to the character “chan” in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions can also be reasonably explained, such as “chan you fumu” as on the bronze plate Shuduofu Pan, meaning to follow the virtues of one’s parents, and “chan shang jue wenmu” as on the bronze tripod Shuai Ding, meaning to follow and promote the virtues of one’s moral mother. The use of “chan” as “chan” is also evidenced in the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips, such as in Tang Chuyu Tangqiu, Wuji, Dafu Shili and Weitian Yongshen. This shows that the usage of “chan” has been consistent during the period from the Western Zhou to the Warring States.

This paper presents a systematic description of predicative possession in the Xibo language, elaborating how the concept of “PR has PE” is encoded. The basic construction is “PR-t PE pi”, in which the possessor (PR) appears as an oblique marked by the locative -t, the possessee (PE) functions as the core argument (the subject), and /pi/ is an intransitive existential verb. Typologically, this corresponds to a locational possession construction, with the literal meaning “at the PR, the PE exists.” Building on this description, the paper explores the relationship among predicative possession, existential constructions, and locative constructions in Xibo, with particular attention to the syntactic isomorphism between predicative possession and existential predication. This isomorphism is argued to arise from the notion that “existence underlies possession”, a diachronic pathway supported by human cognitive foundations and cross-linguistic evidence.

The Kinsei Tō-in (early modern Tang sound) has important literature value to the study of the phonological history of Hangzhou dialect. This type of research should not only focus on the synchronic level, but also pay attention to the diachronic level. The research on sound changes that benefit from it involves both natural sound changes and contact sound changes. With the help of Kinsei Tō-in, the pronunciation of the main vowel of the open division grade III in the ma rhyme (麻韵开口三等主元音) in Hangzhou dialect from the second half of the 17th century to the first half of the 18th century can be confirmed, and knowledge of the specific process and time nodes of the sound changes of the open division grade III in the ma rhyme (麻韵开口三等) in Hangzhou dialect since the Middle Chinese period can be acquired. The Kinsei Tō-in also provides crucial evidence for the restoration of the checked tone system (入声系统) in spoken Hangzhou dialect. However, the literature of Kinsei Tō-in has its own limitations and needs to be used together with Chinese literature.

In Dongguan (Qishi) Yue, the two diminutive changed tones, 35 and 55, have the similar phonetic forms and grammatical functions with the 35 and 55 changed tones in Guangzhou Yue and Guancheng Yue. In regard of the situation of occurrences, however, the diminutive changed tones in Qishi Yue are very different from that in Guangzhou and Guancheng Yue. This paper first explores the correspondences between diminutive changed tones in Qishi Yue and that in Guangzhou and Guancheng Yue, then argues that the 35 and 55 changed tones in Qishi Yue fall under two different strata based on the observations on the language data of both Qishi Yue and other Dongguan Yue dialects.

This paper first categorizes the discourse contexts of “shishishang” (事实上) into two major types: contrastive and non-contrastive, of which the contrastive category includes complete contrast and partial contrast and the non-contrastive category encompasses various semantic relationship types such as causality, question-answering, exemplification, and coordination. The paper then demonstrates from a synchronic grammaticalization perspective that “shishishang” has undergone a shift in usage from nominal to adverbial and from a phrasal structure to a discourse marker. During its semantic evolution from expressing contrast to non-contrast, metaphorical cognitive mechanism plays a crucial role. Finally, the article delves into the meta-discourse property and function of “shishishang”. Its meta-discourse property manifests as subjectivity, topicality, and directionality, while its meta-discourse function is characterized by interactivity.

There is a sentence “民情不贰（minqing bu er）” in chapter 11 of Ziyi of the Book of Rites. The corresponding characters of Ziyi in Guodian bamboo slips and Shangbo bamboo slips are respectively written as “民青不（binqing bu shi）” and “民情不弋（minqing bu yi）”. The old interpretations are both “民情不忒（minqing bu te）”.Through comprehensively and meticulously sorting out characters and words adaptation relationship related to “饰（shi）” and “饬（chi）” in excavated documents, this article points out that their meaning can be adapted with semantic symbols such as“巾（jin）， 糸（幺）（mi）， 衣（yi）” and “玉（yu）， 金（jin）， 贝（bei）” etc., and its sound can be adapted with phonetic symbols such as “食（shi）， 弋（yi）, 力（li）, 来（lai）” etc., resulting in adapted original characters such as“（shi），貣（shi），糼（shi），（shi）” etc. Based on this, the character “（shi）” in Guodian bamboo slips should be a variant of the character “饰（shi）”, and the character “贰（er）” of the Book of Rites should be a mistake of “貣（shi）” and also a variant of the character “饰（shi）”. “饰（shi）” means “to conceal” or “to disguise”. The previous interpretation of “情（Qing）” as referring to “mind”, “psychology”, etc., is wrong. Rather, it should be interpreted as implying the meaning of “sincerity”, “honesty”, etc., the opposite of the meaning of “饰（shi）”. The sentence “民情不饰（minqing bu shi）” means “the people are honest and not disguised”. Ancient rulers have always been concerned about how to ensure the people refrain from concealing or withholding the truth, which is often found in ancient books. Based on the new understanding resulted from the study of characters and words adaptation relationship related to “飾（shi）” and “飭（chi）”, this article reinterprets some related characters and words in unearthed and passed down literature.

Phantom Reference structure is a general expression, including the storyteller’s generalization of events that have already happened or about to be told, or generalization of events that are weakly related or irrelevant to the current course of the story.From the perspective of syntactic distribution and semantic features, Phantom Reference structure often appears in the subject position, the object position and attributive position. When it appears in the above syntactic position, Phantom Reference structure has the tendency of reduced procedurality and weak temporality. The typical semantic feature of Phantom Reference structure is ［+generality］, and the structure generalizes a group of plural events. The Phantom Reference structure is the general expression of the narrator in the process of telling the story, and it is the narration way of the narrator standing outside the book, reflecting the typical characteristics of the narrator stepping out of the story. In essence, the essence of using phantom reference is that the narrator deliberately compresses the specific state of background information and the entire narrative process, so as to highlight the foreground information in the narrative process.

The use of the word men  (们) in the Gansu-Qinghai region is quite distinctive, on which there has been plenty of research. Previous studies have provided excellent surveys and descriptions of characteristics of men. However, whether men has the function of indicating plurality (Associative) in certain contexts has been less explored. Based on actual language data, this paper presents some views that differ from previous analyses. Meanwhile, this study also finds that the use of plural markers in some Tibetan dialects within Qinghai Province shows some characteristics of generalization. Compared to Tibetan dialects like Lhasa Tibetan, these dialects have fewer restrictions, which may be influenced by Altaic languages or may have spread through Chinese as an intermediary language. In any case, this feature shows a strong regional commonality.

The subject-predicate and attributive-head structures composed of the noun“man”, which contains the semantic features \[+rude, tough\], gradually lexicalized into disyllabic adjectives starting from the Northern Song Dynasty; “man (蛮)” grammaticalized into an adjective with a degree scale in the Yuan Dynasty. When the adjective“man (蛮)” functions as an adverbial to modify qualitative adjectives, modal/psychological verbs, and verbs representing repeatable actions, it grammaticalizes into a degree adverb or a frequency adverb in dialects respectively, or is accompanied by sound changes that fill the gaps in the coordination of sound, rhyme and tone. In the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, the degree adverb“man (蛮)” appeared in the central dialects and spread to the common language and surrounding dialects; the frequency adverb“man” has been found in the Hanzhong and Huanggang dialects so far, and its grammaticalization is believed to have started in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties.

The Free Choice structure in Khalkha Mongolian consists of a wh-word combined with the particles l and bol. A formal semantic analysis reveals that bol serves as a conditional marker and introduces a possibility modal, while l functions as an exclusive focus marker, sequentially restricting alternative options in the antecedent of the conditional clause. Additionally, the imperfective aspect which is consistent with FCI universally quantifies over possible situations, thereby generating a free choice interpretation. The interaction of these morphemes forms a structure capable of expressing universal free choice meaning. Cross-linguistic comparison indicates that indirect universal quantification over individuals is an effective strategy for deriving free choice meanings, as evidenced by the parallels with the concessive copula construction in Tibetan.

Old Sino-Korean generally refers to the Korean readings of Chinese characters prior to the unification of the Korean Peninsula in the 7th century. Drawing on the proper nouns documented in Samkuk Saki and Samkuk Yusa, as well as the records from Idu and Hyangka, this paper investigates the phonetic realizations of the zhang(章) initial group and the yi (以) initial in Old Sino-Korean. By comparing these realizations with Old Chinese phonology at different stages, we propose that the readings of Chinese characters in Old Sino-Korean can be stratified into early and late layers. The early layer is characterized by the /*k-/ reading of the zhang initial and the /*l-/ reading of the yi initial, which align closely with the xiesheng (谐声) system. In contrast, the later layer is marked by the /*t-/ reading of both the zhang and yi initials, reflecting a phonological system similar to that evidenced in the Yinqueshan Han slips. Previous studies have shown that Sino-Korean preserves phonetic features from Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Old Mandarin and Modern Mandarin. This paper further demonstrates the existence of different layers in Old Sino-Korean, highlighting the complexity and continuity of language contact between Old Korean and Old Chinese. Future research should systematically examine the phonological system of Old Sino-Korean to further elucidates its internal stratification.

The Zeng Hou Yi Bamboo Slips contain 173 instances of the character (zao). Among these, five cases are explicitly used as造 (zao, meaning “to make/manufacture”), while the remaining 168 cases-all appearing in the structure “noun + ” -should be interpreted as 簉 (zao, meaning “subsidiary” or “auxiliary”), referring to a situation where “the associated items were fully equipped or provisioned with their necessary attachments”. The word 赅 (gai, meaning “complete/fully prepared”) is used in the Chu inventory slips from Tianxingguan and Angang to convey this same meaning. This provides corroborating evidence for the usage of  in the Zeng Hou Yi Bamboo Slips .

There is a different logical starting point between the merging of the voiceless ping tone and the voiceless shang tone in Shanxi dialect and the evolution of the ping tongs in the Bingzhou region of the province regardless of whether they are a yinping tone or a yang-ping tone. The nature of these two developments are completely different and fundamentally incomparable: The former is a retention of an ancient ping tone and the latter is an amalgamation of two tonal categories. The merger of voiceless ping tone and voiceless shang tone is constrained not only by the similarity of the tone type and tone value but also by the nature of the voiceless and voiced tones. In general, only voiceless tones merge with voiceless tones or voiced tones merge with voiced tones. The merging of voiceless ping tone and voiceless shang tone should have first appeared in the northwestern dialects during the periods of Tang Dynasty (618-907) and Five Dynasties (907-960), but the actual merger of the two as independent tones should have occurred after the disappearence of the voiced initial consonants or even later. The path of the merging of voiceless ping tone and voiceless shang tone is governed by their correlation with the surrounding dialects that distinguish yinping tones and shang tones.

During the reign of Emperor Guangxu, Yang Dechun from Pengzhou wrote a series of dengyun (等韵) books such as Yunfa Quantu, which comprehensively discussed the phonological theory and fanqie (反切) theory of his adapted rhyme charts based on the rhyme book Zhitu（直图）. The theory of phonology in rhyme charts has the color of accompanying the Yiology, and characters listed in the rhyme charts was influenced to some extent by the Zhitu and traditional dengyun theory. For example, it draws a farfetched analogy between the thirty-two initial consonants with tai-shao yin-yang, and requires the full voiced initial consonants that read plosive fricatives to be read together with aspirated voiceless initial consonants, etc. However, the rhyme chart and related discussions in the series of literature still largely reflect the actual phonetic features. The paper focuses on the rhyme chart of Yunfa Quantu as the main research object, and refers to the relevant discussions of this series of literature. From the corresponding relationship between Yunfa Quantu and Zhitu, the characters listed in Quantu, and related phonetic discussions, it analyzes and summarizes the actual phonetic features reflected by it. The comparison with the Sichuan Dialect Survey Report reflects that the actual pronunciation of the Yunfa Quantu series of dengyun literature is highly consistent with modern local dialects such as Pengzhou. The Yunfa Quantu and its series of literature combine the theory of Yiology with the theory of rhyme chart, in order to reconcile the contradiction between the pronunciation of Zhitu and the actual pronunciation. The characters listed in the rhyme charts of Yunfa Quantu and the dengyun theory in this series of literature are largely based on the Pengzhou dialect of the late Qing Dynasty, and have valuable historical phonetic research value in Sichuan dialect.

This article examines the processing responses in two EEG experiments, each assessing the use of separable words in two forms: combined and separated. The results indicate that, during isolated processing, separable words do not elicit significantly different EEG responses compared to compound words or verb-object phrases. However, during discrete processing, sentences containing pseudo-separable words induced a larger N400 component, while the P600 component did not show significant differences across the three sentence types. The article suggests that the lexical knowledge of separable words includes both combined and separated forms. When processing sentences with separable words, readers can directly process them using structural knowledge of the discrete form. Although sentences with pseudo-separable words have low predictability, lexical knowledge of separable words can still be accessed to process the structure. The experimental results suggest that the generation and processing of the discrete form may not involve complex syntactic derivation; instead, it may directly employ a metonymic application of various extended patterns within the cohesive verb-object structure. This simplifies the syntactic processing.

Both the morphemes “finish” “die” indicating the meaning of end and the morpheme “many” indicating the meaning of large quantity in Kam-Tai languages have developed the meaning of high degree. The evolution of “finish>extreme degree meaning” has undergone a transition from \[quantity\] to \[degree\], while “die>extreme degree meaning” has shifted from \[state\] to \[degree\]. Both processes are the result of the functioning of the terminal metaphor mechanism. The relatively high degree meaning of “many” derives from its sense of large quantity, representing an instance of the incremental metaphor. Cross-linguistic evidence and cognitive processing patterns indicate that morphemes with terminal meanings are more likely than those with the meaning of large quantity to develop a high-degree semantic function. This finding aligns with the principles of cognitive iconicity.