Suanle(算了) was originally a nonsyntactic structure  and there was no structural relationship between suan(算) and le(了).With the meaning of  suan le(算) unceasingly  bleaching and from the“act”domain to“know”domain,the non-syntactic structure suanle(算了) commonly used in the rhetorical questions started to express the complementary meaning of busuanle(不算了),thus suanle(算了) changed into the abstract righteousness verb by lexicalization to express the meaning of  zuoba (作罢),and the vernacular word suanle (算了) gradually replaced the literary style word bale (罢了).Then the verb suanle (算了)underwent  grammaticalization, entering  the“word”domain, and became an auxiliary which had a modality function.The auxiliary suanle(算了)by further grammaticalization became a  discourse marker.Finally,the paper iscusses suanle (算了)in mandarin Chinese from a synchronic point of view and proposes some universal problems which should be attached importance to in similar studies.

  Based on the superficial understanding of the progression of the studies of grammaticalization abroad and the present studies of grammaticalization of Chinese home，this paper attempts to put forward some issues which need research thoroughly in the current and future study of grammaticalization of Chinese.

  近几年来，生物语言学再度成为学界普遍关注的话题。文章主要探讨了两个方面的问题，一是生物语言学复兴的动因，二是语言学研究人员在生物语言学背景下所面临的机遇与挑战。生物语言学的复兴得益于语言学、生物学等领域的新发现，主要表现在以下五个方面：1）FOXP2基因的发现。FOXP2并非语言所独有的基因。研究表明，FOXP2基因的相关研究可以通过对其他物种如老鼠、鸟类、蝙蝠等的实验来进行。出于伦理道德的考虑，部分研究无法通过对人类的实验而得以完成。2）比较心理学视角的转换。早期的比较认知研究采用的是自上而下的方法，但越来越多的人认识到认知的要素可能为其他物种所共享，因而要求采用自下而上的视角，这与神经科学和进化生物学的研究方法是一致的。3）生物学领域的新综合与扩展。这一因素要求生物学研究走多元化、内在化、结构化的路子，而内在主义则与乔姆斯基语言学所奉行的反行为主义不谋而合。4）对与语言相关的交叉学科中心问题的认识。该问题在神经语言学领域尤为显著，即交叉学科相对于单一学科而言缺少一个共同的表征层面。5）理论语言学中最简方案思想的形成和发展。正是最简思想的出现才使得语言学与认知科学和生物科学的其他分支学科紧密关联。在生物语言学的背景下，对语言学研究人员而言，机遇与挑战并存。所谓的机遇就是最简思想的形成和发展。因为目前相当一部分打着最简思想旗号的研究人员仍然纠结于个别语言的描写以及语言间差异的解释，而并没有真正关注使得人类语言发展成为可能的那些普遍属性，因此语言学研究还有很多工作要做。语言学研究人员面临的最大挑战就是是否具有开放的思想，是否能够走多元化的路子。不同的理论假设并不互相排斥，相反，基于不同理论的语言研究有助于探索人类语言器官的复杂性。

Memetics is a new theory for interpreting cultural evolution. Memes, invented to suggest a strong analogy with genes, are ideas that spread through human cultures and across the generation. Memes are genes of culture, existing as cultural replicators propagated through imitation; language is one form of their carriers. Memes benefit the development of language, and at the same time they benefit themselves by language in the process of replicating and transmitting. Memetically, language memes reveal, from a new angle, the law of speech spread and language replication. Memes in natural language can be reflected in three aspects: educating and passing on knowledge, language applying, informationcommunicating and exchanging. This paper holds that there are two ways for memes to be replicated and transmitted: the same core content being inherited in various forms, and the identical set pattern being followed by different contents. The former is of memetic genotype, and the latter memetic phenotype. This paper also analyses the impact of language memes on translation, culture and language teaching. Finally, it illustrates with examples the significance of the memes and points out that they will help to promote the language evolution and its development.

Treebank is a kind of bracketed corpus which records the syntactic parsing tree of each sentence in it. We will introduce the Penn Chinese Treebank (CTB) built by the University of Pennsylvania, USA. One of the important goals of the CTB annotation is to describe the predicate argument structures in sentences. During syntactic annotation, CTB intently focuses on the following three abstract grammatical relations: complementation, adjunction and coordination. Each of the above grammatical relations is assigned a unique hierarchical structure. Although there are a number of characteristics in the grammar formalism of CTB, we only discuss the following three issues in this article: 1) Complement（补足语）, 2) The Chinese complementizer “的(DEC)”, and 3) The criteria of partofspeech (POS) tagging based on XBar Theory. If we also agree to the fact that the predicate argument description is one of the important goals of treebank construction, then the three issues above are closely related to the goal because they affect not only the performance of automatic POS tagging and parsing systems trained on the treebank but also the results of those subsequent applications.

The initial consonant Xi(溪) is realized as various pronunciations in Cantonese, such as [h], [f], [k‘] and [j], [w]. A general claim on this phonological change is  that [h], [f] and [j], [w] are derived from [k‘]. On the basis of the prevalence of [h] in Guangzhou dialect and in other spoken Cantonese variants, as well as the farflung distribution of the fricativization of the initial consonant Xi in Hakka, Ke, Gan, Yue and Pinghua dialects, this paper argues that [h] is inherited from the original strata in Cantonese, an earliest form resulted from the contacts with Zhuangdong (Kam-Tai) languages and Chinese, while [k‘] is inherited from the written strata caused by migrations from the Central Plain in Song dynasty. And [f] is split from [h] conditioned by the cooccurrence of [-u], and the consonants [j] and [w], are two exceptions caused by the analogy of the main part of a similar vowel of the same she(摄).

Prof.Li Jinxi’s A New Grammar of the Chinese National Language is not only the first pioneering work of its kind,but also the only grammar that has been put to the test of language teaching and Chinese information processing by computers,and proved to be useful and workable. However, it is quite unthinkable to outsiders that since the fifties of the last century,Prof. Li Jinxi’s grammar has ever been the target of groundless and unjust ciriticism and attack . His grammar has been branded by rival schools of grammar as a typical work of imitation of English grammar textbooks and as an outdated work that ought to be discarded and forgotten. It is to be regretted that scientific conscience and scholarship were overridden by partisan fanaticism in an unjust and ruthless competition to gain hegemony even in academic circles, as was the practice not unusual at that time. But now it is time for a fair and just reassessment and reevaluation of Prof. Li’s classic work that laid the foundation of the study of Modern Chinese grammar.

  Community word is the short form of community region word. These words, together with classical Chinese words, dialectal words, and loan words, are the constituents and important sources of the general words of the lexis of modern Chinese language. Community words are distinct from dialectal words. Hong Kong community words reflect the Hong Kong's social characteristics that have formed over many years, in terms of politics, economy, and culture, and the psychological factors of Hong Kongers in their use of words. For adopting general morphemes in the usual way as the morphemes of their word formation, Hong Kong community words qualify for becoming a member of the lexis of modern Chinese language. This article examines the features of this category of words mainly from the aspects of their social origin, characteristics of word formation and frequency in newspapers and magazines. Also discussed are the classification of broadsense and narrowsense Hong Kong community words, and such issues as the differentiation between Hong Kong community words and the dialectal words commonly used in Hong Kong, and the limits of loan words.

Based on the study of their semantic background, the article comparatively probes into the grammatical meanings of “yi jing”and “ceng jing”. Hence the conclusion that“yi jing”, with the semantic features [+continuance] and [+effect], stresses that the event stated in the sentence has happened prior to the statement, or an act, or a certain time, while “ceng jing”, with the semantic features [-continuance] and [-effect], stresses that the event stated in the sentence just happened sometime in the past.

  This paper reviews the theory of prosodic grammar with its results developed for the past ten years. The author attempts to show how substantial questions and empirical problems in Chinese linguistics are solved through applications of prososyntactic theory constructed on the basis of current linguistic theories. It is also shown that results from the studies on prosodic morphology, prosodic syntax, historical syntax and prosodic grammar of written Chinese...etc, converge suggesting that prosody can not only be taken as a functional category that motivates (morpho-)syntactic operations, but also a system structured with stylistic connotations.

Based on the statistical data of a largescale corpus, this article attempts to illustrate that the semi-affix is an important and a separate sort of unit in Mandarin Chinese from the syntacticphonological interface point of view. The paper proposes that, like affixes and particles but not stems, the semiaffixes have the properties of unidirectional high combinability, individualized structural type and grammatical determinant function. Compared with affixes and articles, the semi-affixes also have peculiar properties themselves: The syntagma of semiaffixes are bisyllabic basic words and multisyllabic compound words; whereas affixes can merely combine with monosyllabic words and some bisyllabic words, and particles can combine with all these units and the free phrases. The semi-affixes have very strong potential of analogical innovation. They can innovate a large number of semantically transparent compound words, which proceed up on the receiveorientational syntagmatic all round rules. This is another obvious difference from affixes.

  Idioms are a unique subset of lexical items in Chinese, and they differ from each other in their lexicalization degrees. Viewing from their meanings and structures, this paper classifies Chinese idioms into five categories according to their degrees, namely,phrase-like idiom,smetaphorical idioms, asemantic idioms, agrammatical idioms and completely lexicalized idioms. At the end of the paper, the author probes into the mechanism of the lexicalization of idioms, and concludes that the origination itself, prosody and analogy are likely to be mainly responsible for different lexicalization degrees.

  This paper compares six mathematical transforms for F0 normalisation using eleven speakers of Shanghai, a dialect of Wu Chinese. Various strategies for defining range and selecting normalisation points are also exploited.  The logarithmic zscore transform with normalisation points at F0 targets is found to be superior due to its higher normalisation indices, its advantages in statistics and，perhaps, its accordance with perception and production.

  The unaccusative hypothesis not only provides a proper distinction between two types of intransitive and transitive verbs，but also serves to identify two types of ditransitives. The give-type double-object construction belongs to the unaccusative series with Causer，Experiencer and Patient，while the rob-type DOC with Agent，Affectee，and Patient belongs to the unergative series. Under this analysis，several well-known peculiar constructions in Chinese fall into place，including the so-called transitive unaccusative construction，the retained-object construction，and the outer-object construction.

This paper claims that the negation marker bu(不) in Mandarin is not an adjunct of a VP or a clitic of a verb but a functional head heading an independent NegP in syntax. This claim is supported by Negative Particle Questions with bu at the sentence final position and the linear order of bu and modals as discussed in this paper. This Paper reanalyzes those arguments against this claim as proposed in the literature and finds that they lack adequate evidence for their functions as an adjunct.

  By adopting a synthetic contrastive approach of combining dialects in ancient and current time, and dialects in the North and the South, this thesis makes both a synchronic and diachronic study on paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of the glosseme “eat” among Mandarin Chinese and 41 dialectal places. 1) “喫”appeared as early as in the Buddhist translation in the East Han Dynasty and replaced “食” in late Tang and Five Dynasties. The different geographical layout of the glosseme can be a presentation of types, and also a reflection of origin and area features between the Northern Chinese, the Near-river Dialects and the Far-from-river Dialects. 2) Differences among Mandarin and other dialectal areas exist in collocation range of the glosseme which can be explained by probing into the way of language heritage, the extension of semantic space of the glosseme in Chinese and the systematization of the dialects themselves.

There are two dilemmas in dealing with word classes in Chinese. One dilemma is that fixing word classes leads to unfixed syntactic functions and fixing syntactic functions leads to unfixed word classes. To extricate ourselves from this difficult position we put forward a universal model of Correlated Markedness and pointed out that Chinese also follows this model in the relations between word classes and syntactic functions. The second dilemma is that following the principle of simplicity (POS) leads to violating the head feature convention (HFC) and following HFC leads to violating POS. To extricate ourselves from this predicament we argue that unlike the situation in IndoEuropean languages, nouns, verbs, and adjectives in Chinese are not three separate word classes. In particular, in Chinese adjectives is a subcategory of verbs, which in turn a subcategory of nouns. The essential difference between Chinese and IndoEuropean languages lies in the fact that the former is constitutive while the latter is realizational in mapping a concrete category onto an abstract one. This paper holds this is the deep cognitive motivation behind the fact that Chinese is a language which lacks morphological inflections.

Bare classifier phrases can be found in most Sinitic languages. The syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation of bare classifier phrases vary in different languages. This paper reexamines the phrases from a typological perspective and puts forward three implicational universals with respect to syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation. All Sinitic languages can be categorized into seven types according to the three implicational universals. This study shows that preverbal position tends to be definite while postverbal position tends to be indefinite in Sinitic languages.

Drawing on 8.22 hours of naturally occurring spoken Chinese data, four pragmatic functions of non-deictic na(ge)（那（个）） are recognized according to their phonetic variations， positions amidst the flow of discourse，and interactivity they are designed to achieve. Th paper points out that speakers’ frequent and strategic use of discourse marker na(ge)（那（个）） enables the intersubjectification among both parties of the discourse and thereby conducing to discursive and social interaction. The comparison of the discourse marker na(ge)（那（个）） in telephone and fact to face conversations shows that  na(ge)（那（个）） is much more used in telephone conversations.

  This paper discusses tense and aspect in Mandarin Chinese. We will focus on a series of Chinese structures and explore how tense is manifested via various structural expressions in Chinese and how they are analyzable under the core feature of reference of tense. The goal of our discussion is to seek how tense, as a temporal structural builder of language, is interpreted via reference time in Mandarin Chinese.

Based on the theory of construction, this paper holds that “xiao（小） OV zhe（着）” expresses the meaning of “suitable life situation”, in which the most important factors are “situation” and “subjective  presentation”. The emergence of this construction is from image picture in people’s mind and the characteristic of the ingredients. “xiao OV zhe” can be used as background information and an evidence to what it values. It’s original form can be inferred from in Modern Chinese, and is different from other similar constructions.

The word “ge”(个) has many semantic functions in modern Chinese dialects, including individual measure word, kind measure word, demonstrative pronoun, pronoun, degree, manner, topic marker, definite article, modifying marker, genitive marker, noun marker, modal particle, complement marker, among others. Based on previous researches and supported by data from historical documents and dialects, this paper proposes a semantic evolution model of  “ge”.

The Cantonese vernacular word “maih”\[[HT7”][HT4”，5SS]mai\], conventionally written as “mai”(埋), is a polysemant which embraces the following interrelated semantic items: (1) to approach, as in \[[HT7”][HT4”，5SS]mai tsam[HT7”][HT4”，5SS]\]; (2) to gather, as in \[[HT7”][HT4”，5SS]mai [HT7”][HT4”，5SS]ty\]; (3) a perfective aspectual marker, as in \[tsou[HT7”][HT4”，5SS] [HT7”][HT4”，5SS]mai\], etc. A comparative study based on the close examination of its cognates found in historical documents as well as in other dialects around Guangdong Province, such as Toishan, Hakka and Swatow, has demonstrated that the etymological character of the Cantonese “maih”\[[HT7”][HT4”，5SS]mai\] is “mo”(摩) (initial category “ming”(明) and rhyme category “ge”(戈) in Middle Chinese phonology) instead of the homophonic substitution “mai”. The rhyme of this character varies in pronunciation as \[ai\]\[ui\]\[ua\]\[i\] in Yue, Min and Hakka dialects, resulting from different historical strata of the Old Chinese rhyme category “ge”(歌) retained in the colloquial readings of modern Sinitic dialects. Thereupon, the etymological sources of some vernacular words in Southwestern Mandarin can also be analyzed and deciphered.

The relationship between Chinese and Indo-European languages has attracted attention of scholars of comparative historical linguistics. The discovery of Tocharian in Xinjiang from 19th to the beginning of 20th century helped a lot in establing the relationship of these two. Since Tocharian existed so anciently, it couldn’t provide evidence to prove the genetic relationship between Chinese and Indo-European. But the names of tribes and places of Tocharian remained in Chinese and Chinese loanwords in Tocharian offer concrete for the evidence for close contact between Chinese and Indo-European. That also suggests the relationship between East Asian languages and Proto-Caucasian.

More attention is being paid to the historical study of the phonology of Chinese dialects. In this paper, we discuss some related theories and methods with regard to the historical study of Chinese phonology, including language strata, lexical diffusion and typology,using the phonological history of the Wu dialect. Lexical diffusion theory holds that the basic unit of sound change is word. Stratum theory focuses on the difference between internal evolution and external contact. It’s noticeable that literary and colloquial readings is just a relative concept. The literary reading can occur either in book reading or in vernacular speech while the colloquial reading can only occur in vernacular speech, which is related to the unit and way of sound change. The theory of diachronic implication in linguistic typology provides a scientific perspective and research method. The methods of comparison, structural analysis and typological analysis emphasize on collection of information from phonological evolution of Chinese dialects. The method of literary research also provides synchronic analysis with very important historical evidence as well.

In Chinese linguistics, study of syntax was a rather belated development, confined from the very beginning by the frames of “Latin grammar”. As a result, many Chinese sentences are often improperly analyzed, or simply misinterpreted. So some scholars have questioned this approach, and advocated that “the special character of the Chinese language ”should be considered, or that “the European preconceptions” should be cast away , but no one has told us clearly how to do that. Y. R. Chao never mentioned this problem, but his unique way of analyzing “Spoken Chinese ” even before the question was raised is highly inspiring. The author of the present paper once proposed that there are about eight “special features” in Chinese sentence formation, and argued that proper interpretation of both the meaning and the structure of Chinese sentences can be reached only when these features have been seriously considered. In this paper , he further explains that those “special features ” are really derived from Chao's unique ideas about Chinese sentences, including his new definitions for “sentence”, “minor sentence ”, “full sentence ”, “subject as topic ”, “predicate as comment”, etc. Therefore, this proposal of “special features” in Chinese sentence formation can be appreciated, only when we can appreciate and accept those new definitions Chao proposed earlier.

This paper discusses neutralization of tones with respect to their grammatical functions in Beijing Dialect. It is argued that neutralization in Beijing dialect is an ongoing change and there are different degrees of neutralizations caused by interactions between the various components of the grammar. Factors involved in such processes include mora, syllable, morphological prosody, lexical semantics, functional category among others. The argument made here claims that the prosodic grammar discussed in this paper offers a new perspective and a deeper understanding of the origin and process of neutralizations not only in phonology and prosody, but also in morphology and syntax.

  This paper argues that pragmatically dynamic state has two opposite aspects: the aspect of dynamic diversity and the aspect of static regularity. Therefore it can be analyzed both dynamically and statically. The order of the topic and the comment in Chinese is that the topic goes before the comment, which belongs to the routine and static aspect, while in a specific sentence the topic can appear before or after the comment, which belongs to the dynamic aspect. Sentence types, which are abstracted from the functions of specific and dynamic sentences, are static, while their specific uses or analyses are dynamic. The regular focus is a static focus which is abstracted from the isolated and specific sentence, while the contrastive focus is a dynamic focus which is related to certain reality in context and embodies the variability and diversity of the focus. And in reference, seen from a static angle, personal pronouns, proper nouns and “zhe/na+(quantifier)+noun” are definite and “yi+(quantifier)+noun” and “quantifier + noun” are indefinite, while in certain context the static definiteness or indefiniteness of the word reference is not unchangeable. Whether the word reference is definite or indefinite in a specific sentence is decided by the context.

The ConstructionChunk Approach (CCA) is a new approach for syntax and semantic analysis. With an aim to  introduce the theoretical framework of CCA, this paper discusses its central ideas, research questions, methodology, and grammar model. Using the existential sentences in Mandarin Chinese, English, and other eight languages as examples, this paper illustrates the following main points: A construction is made up of a chunk chain; universals and variations of the syntactic constructions in human languages are mainly represented by the similarities and disparities of the chunk chains.  It argues that CCA provides a new cognitive and functional perspective on grammar mechanism of natural languages and language universals.

This paper gives an investigation of the interjection of modern Chinese. On the basis of the rule to combine the grammatical form with its meaning, this paper gives a new predicati for the grammatical properties, semantic properties and syntactic expressions of the interjection. Basicon this, the paper fixed the position of the interjection. Interjection is a kind of the verb. It may be named the voiceverb.

This paper discusses the nature of grammar from various angles. It seems that there are always exceptions for grammatical rules, but the so-called exceptions actually reflect the nature of grammar. Having explored the correlation between rules and exceptions, we can not only understand properties of grammar but successfully draw rules of grammar as well. The coverage of this paper is the scope of grammatical rules, the levels of language, statistical rules of grammar, historical layers of grammatical rules, the interaction between meanings of constructions and grammatical markers.

Through cross-dialectal study as well as comparison with the Kam-Tai, the article proves that the marker of durative aspect is homogeneous in southeastern Chinese dialects but exclusive to other dialects, which is resulted from substratum of the ancient Bai-Yue languages.

In modern Spoken Chinese, expressions such as nikanni (你看你), kanni, niqiaoni (你瞧你) and qiaoni (瞧你) are commonly heard. They bear the function of discourse markers, whose pragmatic connotation can be generalized as "reminding others of being aware of their improper words or behaviors". The evolvement of this kind of discourse markers is a process of subjectivization and inter-subjectivization.

In languages possessing topic markers, copulas may not be as obligatorily used in nominal predication sentences with topic markers employed as without these markers. The copula-substituting feature of topic markers in nominal predications can be accounted for by their function in combining and parsing the two adjacent constituents and in labeling the identity of the two constituents, the topic and the comment relatively. The copulasubstituting phenomenon can notably be attested in topic-prominent languages.

  It can not be denied that researches on functional words in ancient China had achieved greatly, nevertheless, they were mere handmaids of classic philological studies, and never researched into the field of grammar. Jing Zhuan Shi Ci was the representative work on functional words best accomplished in ancient China, but it misled other researchers to study functional words in an exegetical approach. Ma Shi Wen Tong dealt with its research work from the view of system grammar, and some of its ideas were more brilliant than many other grammatical works in the history even nowadays. However, it is a pan-chronic grammatical work, and in want of the viewpoint of historical development. It has some deficiencies or mistakes unavoidably. From 1950s, what deserves the greatest attention is that some papers began to combine diachronic analysis with synchronic research on functional words. They pay close attention to the historical changes of every functional word while attaching importance to the systematic development of functional words through different periods of time, which indicates the coming of a new stage of research on functional words.

State adjectives, are the most important nonprototypical members among adjectives. Previous studies on adjective are mostly based on attributive adjectives which are prototypical, while the state adjectives have rarely been discussed, which calls for a comprehensive and systematic study. This paper concerning all the adjectives, presents the defining standard of state adjectives and investigates their grammatical features in the hope of enriching and deepening the grammatical perception of Chinese adjectives.

The research on the Chinese as a second language proficiency assessment theory and its application has carried out more than twenty years and has yielded fruitful results, especially in the development and application of Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK), Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards and Chinese Language Proficiency Scales for Speakers of Other Languages. However, due to the limitation of the theoretical exploration of language ability, there is a large room for the study of Chinese as a second language proficiency assessment in the association degree between the subjects’ actual language skills, ability to assess and define and the proficiency scales. Based on the question of fitness found in the implementation of HSK, the article presents a review on the study of Chinese as a second language proficiency assessment, aiming to develop an accurate and impartial Chinese proficiency scales for more successful promotion of Chinese as a second language.

Native speakers (NSs) of certain southern dialects of Modern Chinese, e.g., Cantonese, have been reported to have difficulty in learning the contrast of /l/ and /n/ in English or Putonghua. Intensive shortterm audio training could only moderately improve the identification ability of these learners. This study investigates whether visual information will facilitate such perceptual process. Effects of visual articulatory cues in perception of places of articulation have attracted much attention, but little attention has been drawn on the effect in perceiving manners, except for the contarst between /r/ and /l/ in English. As /l/ and /n/ share the same place of articulation, it has been assumed that visually noticeable difference is minimal between the two. Our analysis on video recording of /l/ and /n/ production by native English speakers, however, reveals visual differences in advancement of tongue tips. Our research then testfies the effects of such visual cues in the identification of the nonnative contrast by Cantonese learners of English. Results show that the addition of relatively more distinct visual information can help Cantonese speakers better perceive the two sounds in certain contexts, but perception under a single modal remains poor

This paper points out that only correct is Wang’s theory of sounds from nature among those of origins of Lianmian Words, who was a great scholar in Qin Dynasty. We pick up as an example all Disyllabic Roots from [WTBX]Fangyan[WTBZ] (方言), a dictionary by Yangxiong in the Western Han dynasty, and explain that Chinese is not a type of monosyllabic language from the beginning. Then we prove the evolutional process of Chinese from polysyllable to monosyllable by the law of iambic pattern and the data of Darang language, which is much similar to Austroasiatic languages in word forms. Lianmian words are remains of ancient Chinese polysyllabic words.