ince the pre-Qin period, a homophonous restrictive adverb had existed in Chinese, and after the Eastern Han dynasty, it gradually came to be written as “cai (纔/才)”. As early as the Spring and Autumn period, cai was used as an inceptive aspect marker. By the Eastern Han dynasty, it had evolved into a near-past perfective marker, which became the predominant use of the temporal adverb cai during the Sui and Tang dynasties. From the Tang dynasty onward, the functions of the restrictive adverb and near-past perfective marker gradually converged. As the syntactic position of cai shifted progressively toward the right periphery of the sentence, it developed into a conjunctive adverb and subsequently a modal adverb during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. From the perspective of functional differentiation, cai in modern Chinese can be classified into five distinct uses. From the perspective of functional integration, however, with the exception of its purely temporal use, these functions share several common syntactic and semantic properties: they involve semantically posterior reference, scalar structure, and a quantity, state, or event that falls short of expectation. Pragmatically, cai generally conveys a negative evaluative implication. In low-magnitude constructions, cai indicates that a quantity or state is lower than expected, whereas in high-magnitude constructions, it indicates that an event occurs less readily or less fully than expected. A comprehensive description and analysis of the various functions of cai therefore require a clear and principled distinction between magnitude structures and subjective expectations.

This paper examines the state adjective and onomatopoeia in Chinese from the perspective of ideophones. It argues that some of ideophones in Antient Chinese underwent a process of deideophonization in later stages of the language, as exemplified by fangfu, youran, and fenfen. Deideophonization is manifested in a reduction in syntactic independence, a weakening of semantic syntheticity, and the loss of iconicity. Its essence lies in a change in the mode of representation, namely, from depiction to description. Certain types of ideophones are more prone to deideophonization than others. In particular, lianmian words, state adjectives, and high-frequency of use can be regarded as facilitating conditions for deideophonization. Ideophones may evolve into verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, but are less likely to develop into nouns, suggesting a constraint on the process of deideophonization.

Conditional sentences in Yi employ a variety of relational markers, among which disyllabic compound markers display distinctive characteristics within the Sino-Tibetan language family. Based on data from the Shengzha vernacular of Northern Yi, this study examines these markers from three perspectives: their morphological structure and origin, their grammatical functions within sentence groups, and their pragmatic roles. The findings show that Yi disyllabic compound markers primarily convey semantic and pragmatic meanings while also serving syntactic functions.Specifically, they reinforce hypotheticality, express the speaker’s stance and emotions, and signal logical relations between clauses. A comparison with Chinese reveals similarities and differences. While the two languages share certain structural mechanisms in the formation of conditional markers, they differ in syntactic position, formation mechanisms, predominant marker types, and patterns of co-occurrence. The formation of disyllabic conditional markers in Yi is constrained primarily by word order, whereas that in Chinese is shaped mainly by disyllabic prosody.

This paper reexamines the encoding mechanism and the intrinsic properties of nominal countability in Mandarin Chinese. From a theoretical perspective, nominal countability should be distinguished at two levels: ontological countability at the lexico-semantic level and grammatical countability at the morphosyntactic level. While it is widely acknowledged that ontological countability is present in the Chinese nominal system, whether Chinese has grammatical countability remains controversial. Two hypotheses have been proposed to account for the encoding of grammatical countability in Chinese: the Structural Distinction Hypothesis, which distinguishes between bare nouns and classifier-noun phrase, and the Classifier Type Hypothesis, which distinguishes between count classifiers and mass classifiers. Drawing on fine-grained linguistic evidence from Mandarin, this paper employs a reductio ad absurdum approach to falsify both hypotheses. It argues that Chinese lacks a grammatical encoding of countability and further examines the manifestations of ontological countability in Mandarin nominals. Finally, drawing on the theory of Measurement Constructions, we propose the conjecture that languages with obligatory classifiers are unable to develop grammatical countability as a grammatical category.

In Xiang dialects, the form wu guo (唔过) functions not only as a high-degree adverb but also as a modal expression denoting a high epistemic possibility. The attributive-head construction wu guo, originally meaning “not exceeding” or “not passing”, underwent metaphorical extension from the spatial domain to the qualitative domain, driven by syntactic expansion and pragmatic inference. It first developed from a potential complement into a high-degree adverb and subsequently underwent further grammaticalization into an epistemic modal encoding high degree of certainty in contexts involving exhortation, suggestion, justification and related pragmatic functions. The semantic shift from “high degree” to “high epistemic possibility” reveals a previously underrecognized pathway for the development of epistemic modality and enriches the typology of lexical sources of modal markers.

This study examines a unique pronominal phenomenon in modern Shanghainese, in which the reflexive “ze-ka (自家)” functions as a second-person honorific, corresponding to Mandarin “nín (您)”. This usage  appears to be unattested in other Chinese dialects and has received limited attention in the literature on Chinese linguistics. Through an analysis of its syntactic and semantic properties, this research explores the pragmatic mechanisms underlying the emergence and development of this honorific form, supported by relevant typological studies. The findings suggest that the honorific sense of “ze-ka” can be accounted for in terms of general linguistic principles of language use. Specifically, the semantic underspecification of ze-ka allows it to assume an expanded referential scope, adhering to the politeness principle and serving as a form of negative-politeness strategy.

Based on the formal characteristics of tone sandhi rules, Chinese tone sandhi systems can be broadly classified into three major types: contextual, positional, and spreading. Mandarin exhibits contextual tone sandhi, Xiamen positional tone sandhi, and Shanghai spreading tone sandhi, while other dialects exhibit varying degrees of these properties. This paper proposes two features, \[trigger\] and \[spread\], to quantify the extent to which tone sandhi is conditioned by a trigger or involves tonal spreading, and applies these features to a quantitative analysis of tone sandhi in select Wu and Min dialects. Xiamen exhibits a positional pattern, with both \[trigger\] and \[spread\] assigned a value of 0, whereas Shanghai exhibits a spreading pattern, with \[spread\] assigned a value of 1 and \[trigger\] a value of 0. In the eight dialects examined along the geographic continuum between Shanghai and Xiamen, the degrees of triggering and spreading oscillate between 0 and 1. In addition, tonal spreading interacts with syllable dominance. Xiamen is right-dominant: the rightmost syllable retains its lexical tone, while the tones of non-final syllables undergo sandhi. Shanghai, by contrast, is left-dominant: the tone of the leftmost syllable spreads rightward, replacing the original lexical tones of the following syllables. These findings suggest a gradual areal transition between positional and spreading tone-sandhi systems across the Wu-Min region.

The well-known passage in the Analects reads: “Hui ye qi shu hu! Lou kong” (回也其庶乎！屡空). How should the phrase “lou kong (屡空)” be interpreted? Previous scholarship has generally understood it as meaning “frequently suffering from poverty”. From a linguistic perspective, however, “lou kong” is a variant of “lou kong (娄空)”, forming a coordinative structure denoting emptiness or poverty. As a phrase originating in the Analects, it belongs to the category of allusive expressions. This study therefore calls for renewed attention to the reading of original texts and a reconsideration of conventional interpretations of such expressions.

The mainstream view in academia holds that “wu”(物) is a single character or pictophonetic character derived from a combined character, with its original meaning being a piebald cow. In fact, “wu”(物) is a differentiated character formed by adding the attention symbol “niu”(牛) to “wu”(勿). The true “wu”(物) character first appeared during the Qin-Han era and originally referred to categories of animals, later becoming a general term for all kinds of things. The “wu”(物) in oracle bone inscriptions should be distinguished from the “wu”(物) in later periods. In oracle bone inscriptions, “wu”(物) is the combined character “wu”(勿) and “niu”(牛). The “wu”(物) character itself does not have the meaning of a piebald cow; in Thirty as objects from the Wuyang(《无羊》) poem in the Book of Songs(《诗经》), the “wu”(物) simply refers to the variety of colors of sheep and cows, not thirty piebald cows.