LANGUAGE CONTACT AND AREAL DIFFUSION

IN SINITIC LANGUAGES
Hilary Chappell

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Hilary Chappell. LANGUAGE CONTACT AND AREAL DIFFUSION IN SINITIC LANGUAGES.
Alexandra Aikhenvald & RMW Dixon. Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: problems for typology
and genetic affiliation, Oxford University Press, pp.328-357, 2006, 0199283087. �hal-00850205�

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 LANGUAGE CONTACT AND AREAL DIFFUSION IN SINITIC
LANGUAGES
(pre-publication version)

Hilary Chappell

This analysis includes a description of language contact phenomena such as

stratification, hybridization and convergence for Sinitic languages. It also presents
typologically unusual grammatical features for Sinitic such as double patient
constructions, negative existential constructions and agentive adversative passives,
while tracing the development of complementizers and diminutives and demarcating
the extent of their use across Sinitic and the Sinospheric zone. Both these kinds of
data are then used to explore the issue of the adequacy of the comparative method to
model linguistic relationships inside and outside of the Sinitic family. It is argued that
any adequate explanation of language family formation and development needs to
take into account these different kinds of evidence (or counter-evidence) in modeling
genetic relationships.
In §1 the application of the comparative method to Chinese is reviewed,
closely followed by a brief description of the typological features of Sinitic languages
in §2. The main body of this chapter is contained in two final sections: §3 discusses
three main outcomes of language contact, while §4 investigates morphosyntactic
features that evoke either the North-South divide in Sinitic or areal diffusion of
certain features in Southeast and East Asia as opposed to grammaticalization
pathways that are crosslinguistically common.i

1. The comparative method and reconstruction of Sinitic

In Chinese historical phonology, various methods have been applied with relative
success to the Sinitic family in the reconstruction of both stages of Middle and Old
Chinese. In Etudes sur la phonologie chinoise (1915-26), Karlgren published his
ground-breaking reconstruction of Middle Chinese according to three main sources:
an analysis of rhyme tables based on the early seventh century dictionary Qièyùn (601
AD), Sinoxenic readings from Japanese and Vietnamese, and data from nineteen
dialects which he collected while carrying out fieldwork in China from 1910 to 1912.
Strictly speaking, he did not apply the comparative method to these dialect data but
determined the phonological system of Middle Chinese on the basis of the Qièyùn,
interpreting and assigning phonetic values to the rhyme categories.ii Note that the
Qièyùn dictionary was compiled as a guide to the correct pronunciation for the
recitation of the classics. Hence, its precise relation to the spoken language of its time
is not transparent. Many scholars believe that it is based on several different spoken
dialects of the time and not just that of the capital, Chang’an (present-day Xi’an),
while others believe it reflects educated speech from the 6th century CE, that is, the
end of the Nanbeichao dynasty (Northern and Southern dynasties, 420-589 CE).
Karlgren later worked on the reconstruction of Old Chinese based on his Middle
Chinese reconstruction in conjunction with an analysis of the rhyme categories of the
Shījīng (Book of Odes) and the information which could be deduced from the phonetic
components present in most Chinese written characters. Old Chinese hypothetically
reflects the elevated speech of the late Zhou period of fifth to third centuries BCE, in the
view of some scholars, or the even earlier period of the Western Zhou in the view of
others (roughly the first half of the first millennium BCE). These are not, however,
uncontroversial issues, for which a fuller discussion may be found in Sagart (1999) or
for a contrary view, in Baxter (1992).
The Shījīng is an anthology of poems from 1000 – 500 BC, compiled in the sixth
century BCE. An early observation made by scholars in China was that characters which
rhymed in it generally contained the same phonetic element. Karlgren’s contribution was
similarly to interpret and assign values to the categories of initials and finals in the
Shījīng (Book of Odes) which would obey regular phonetic laws for development into
those he had earlier posited for Middle Chinese. Karlgren’s second reconstruction was
published in 1940 as Grammata Serica with a revised version appearing in 1957. Given
the lack of records of real dialect materials from the late Nanbeichao and Sui periods to
which Middle Chinese roughly corresponds, the reconstruction of Old Chinese could not
avoid being the more hypothetical of the two. Karlgren’s postulation of these two earlier
stages of the Chinese language inspired further work by sinologists resulting in revisions
and new breakthroughs, and provided indisputable evidence for the genetic relationship
of Sinitic languages, though be it mainly on the basis of phonology and the lexicon.iii

2
Nonetheless, the focus on phonetic laws and the use of the neo-grammarian approach
with its assumption of homogeneous data in Chinese linguistic reconstruction was early
criticized by Grootaers (1943) and Serruys (1943) as the sole means of relating dialects
to Old and Middle Chinese. In particular, they both objected to Karlgren’s use of
character lists for elicitation and dialect dictionaries based on the reading of standard
Chinese characters. The reading lists not only required literate language informants but
could also hardly avoid producing the literary pronunciations which by definition hold a
close relationship to the standard language, Mandarin, and thus neatly supported his
reconstruction (see also §3.2.1 on stratification). In many cases, these pronunciations
represented morphemes not used at all in the local patois which belong to the purely
colloquial level.
In the same study, Grootaers (1943) shows how methods in geographical
linguistics can be successfully applied to capturing dialect isoglosses in Northern
Chinese for both the innovation and extent of use of phonetic and lexical features,
based on ‘real’ colloquial items. Similarly, Hashimoto (1992) pioneered the use of
Wellentheorie (wave theory) in Chinese linguistics to account for the spread of tonal
categories and phonetic features such as retention or loss of voicing in Chinese
dialects. The use of lexical and morphological data has also been incorporated in
various handbooks produced by Beijing University in the 1960s such as Hànyǔ
fāngyán cíhuì [A lexical list for Chinese dialects] and Hànyǔ fāngyán gàiyào [An
outline of Chinese dialects] compiled by Yuan (1960 [1989]) which includes
syntactic data. More recently the inutility of the family tree model to explain how
languages develop in a relatively stable environment is raised by Hashimoto (1992:
32) for Hakka and by Dixon (1997) for the general case.
In sections three and four which follow, it is argued that the family tree
model, used alone, is inadequate to capture the complexities of linguistic phenomena
created during the course of evolution and geographical distribution of a language
family: the comparative method and the family tree model simply cannot account for
all the facets associated with language change and development and to be fair were
never intended to do so. They need to be used in conjunction with other methods to
account for the effects of language contact such as stratification, hybridization and
convergence, not to mention other possible outcomes such as mixed languages and
language obsolescence.

3
2. Typological features of Sinitic
Sinitic languages form a sister group with the Tibeto-Burman languages of the Sino-
Tibetan language family located in East and Southeast Asia. As a language family,
Sinitic languages are as diverse as the Romance or Germanic languages within the
Indo-European family. The spoken forms of Chinese languages are not mutually
intelligible: a speaker of Suzhouese, a Wu dialect, will not understand a compatriot
from Quanzhou, who speaks a Southern Min dialect. Even within dialect groups such
as Min or Yue there is a high degree of mutual unintelligibility between subdivisions
such as Coastal versus Inland Min, or one of the Guangxi Yue dialects versus Hong
Kong Cantonese Yue.
Typologically, Sinitic languages are tonal languages which show analytic or
isolating features, though in some Min languages, for example, the development of
case markers and complementizers from lexical verbs, and the use of a range of
nominal suffixes, has moved further along the path of grammaticalization than for
Mandarin. Complex allomorphy is also widespread in Min dialects, exemplified by
the many forms for each negative marker in Fuzhouese (Northeastern Min) and for
the diminutive suffix in Southern Min.
Tone sandhi (or tone change) can be used to code morphological functions in
Chinese languages. For example, in Toishan Cantonese, aspectual distinctions such as
the perfective and the plural form of pronouns can be signalled in this way. Tone
sandhi phenomena are, however, most conspicuous in the Min and Wu dialect groups
where citation or juncture forms for each syllable differ from contextualized forms.
Although Sinitic languages have SVO basic word order, object preposing is a
common contrastive device and postverbal intransitive subjects are common in
presentative constructions. The modifier generally precedes the modified element.
This means that subordinate or backgrounding clauses typically precede main clauses
while attributives precede head nouns and adverbs precede verbs. Well-known
exceptions to this rule are presented by the case of gender affixes on animal terms and
certain semantic classes of nominal compounds and adverbs in many Southern Sinitic
languages.
The ten major Sinitic languages (or Chinese dialect groups) that are generally
recognized are listed below:

4
I. Northern Chinese (Mandarin) 北方话
II. Xiang 湘
III. Gan 赣
IV. Wu 吴
V. Min 闽
VI. Kejia or Hakka 客家
VII. Yue dialects 粤
VIII. Jin dialects 晋
IX. Hui dialects 徽
X. Pinghua 平话

Mandarin covers the largest expanse of territory from Manchuria in the northeast of
China to Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in the southwest. Apart from the Jin dialects,
the eight other dialect groups fall neatly into almost complementary geographical
distribution with Mandarin, covering the east and southeast of China: Xiang dialects
are largely concentrated in Hunan province; Gan in Jiangxi; Wu in southern Jiangsu
and Zhejiang provinces; Hui dialects in southern Anhui and adjacent areas of Jiangxi
and western Zhejiang provinces; Min in Fujian; Yue in both Guangdong and Guangxi
provinces; Kejia in northeastern Guangdong, southwestern Fujian and parts of Jiangxi
and Sichuan provinces and the Pinghua dialects in Guangxi. The Jin dialects in
Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia represent the only non-migrant dialect group to
be found in Northern China, apart from Mandarin.

2.1 A note on Chinese dialect history

According to Bellwood (this volume), archaeological evidence points to Neolithic
settlements in two areas of modern China -- the middle and lower Huang He (Yellow
River) and the Yangzi River valleys. These can be dated to around 7000 BCE.
However, reconstruction of Proto-Chinese, based on the diversity found in modern
dialects, cannot hope to reach much further back than the first millennium BCE (see
§1).
Overall, the development of Sinitic languages over the last two and a half
millennia can be aptly modeled in terms of its history of imperialist unification and

5
expansion accompanied by ensuing periods of relative equilibrium. These were in
turn regularly punctuated by periods of disunity and temporary fragmentation of the
Chinese empire. During the formation time of the Sinitic group, the major migrations
of the Han Chinese took place from northern China to various regions in the south,
for which a detailed coverage of population movements in China over the last several
millennia is provided in LaPolla (this volume) while a brief history of Chinese
dialects is given in Chappell (in press [d]) and thus not recapitulated here.
The general consensus regarding the approximate time of diversification of
Chinese into the present-day dialect groups is around the time of Medieval Chinese
during the Sui (581-618) and early Tang dynasties (618-907) for Yue, Xiang, and
Gan but earlier, during the transitional period for the Han dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD)
for the ancestral language(s) of Wu and Min. Sagart (1988, in press) and You (1992:
97) claim that Wu, Xiang, Yue and Gan developed directly from earlier stages of
Northern Chinese whereas Min was probably a secondary development from a
Southern Sinitic language such as Wu (or proto Wu-Min), and Hakka, similarly, a
secondary development from Southern Gan during the Tang period. Ting (1983) and
Norman (1988: 189) do not entirely concur with this view regarding Min, holding
that there is a strong demarcation line between Wu and Min linguistic territory, but
agree on the early split. The larger dialect picture for Sinitic languages was thus
essentially in place by the end of the Southern Song (1127-1279), apart from the later
formation of the Hui dialects by the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
Sagart aptly describes dialect groups as ‘fuzzy entities that owe (as) much (of)
their make-up to contact as opposed to vertical inheritance’ (1997: 298-9). He further
argues for the difficulty of using isoglosses to determine dialect boundaries given that
innovations may be obliterated or reversed through contact, with the result that the
family tree model is only strictly applicable to rarer situations where diversification
and loss of contact co-occur, as for Austronesian, concurring with Dixon (1997). The
history of Sinitic languages certainly presents a case in point, exemplifying the
difficulties that could arise if the family tree model and comparative method were
exclusively used to represent genetic relationships. The implication is that a fuller
description of the evolution of Sinitic languages necessarily involves modeling
genetic relatedness as well as the characteristics of Mischsprachen, ‘mixed
languages’, (see Heine & Kuteva this volume) combining substratum or superstratum
features of ‘step-parent’ contact languages (Dixon 1997: 71). These, in their turn, can

6
be either genetically related or unrelated which has further typological ramifications.
Next I consider some aspects of areal diffusion in the Southeast and East Asian
region before beginning on the main discussion.

2.2 Areal diffusion

Mantaro Hashimoto has convincingly argued for a North-South divide for Chinese
languages on the basis of phonological, lexical and syntactic evidence (see
Hashimoto 1974, 1976a, 1976b, 1986). His thesis essentially has the following
argumentation: Chinese languages are sandwiched between Altaic languages in the
north and Tai languages in the south, with the typogeographical consequence of
Altaicization of northern Chinese varieties and Taiization of Southern Sinitic.
Furthermore, he observes that the north-south opposition can be clearly perceived in
features such as the increasing number of classifiers, tones and consonantal endings
to syllables, not to mention the monosyllabic nature of morphemes as one moves
southwards. He notes that some varieties of Northern Chinese show agglutinative
tendencies, witnessed in the existence of a postposition for accusative/dative case in
Qinghai Mandarin, stress-accent dominance over tone, and adoption of O-V
structures as in Northwestern Mandarin dialects spoken in Qinghai and Gansu
provinces. Other broad divisions are the typically MODIFIER-MODIFIED word order in
the north versus MODIFIED-MODIFIER order for some structures in the south; different
comparative strategies; different word orders for the ‘double object’ or ditransitive
construction; and aspect and tense distinctions maintained in the south while merged
in the north.
To this could be added the more limited use of patient-marking or disposal
constructions where the direct object is positioned before the main verb and preceded
by a special marker, for example, the extensively researched bă 把 construction in
Mandarin: S – bă– O – V. In its canonical form, it codes a highly transitive event that
affects a referential object with a specifiable effect or result state. Cheung (1992) has
shown that Cantonese, which uses the Medieval Chinese exponent jeung1 将[jiāng],
is restricted to transitive verbs, whereas Mandarin also allows its use with intransitive
verbs provided there is a causative interpretation (see Chappell 1992a). Furthermore,
the use of jeung1 is more a feature of formal discourse than colloquial Cantonese,

7
evidence of Mandarin influence. Similarly, Hakka also reportedly uses this
construction much less frequently than Mandarin (Yuan 1989).
Bisang (1996) presents a typology of classifiers according to their functions in
Southeast and East Asian languages, showing a similar set of geographical
correlations with respect to enumeration, referentialization and other parameters. In
Cantonese, for example, classifiers may also be used as possessive and relative clause
markers, thus showing a greater alliance with Tai languages as opposed to Northern
Chinese which does not permit this function.
With regard to Northern Chinese, Hashimoto (1986: 95) suggests that a
pidgin Chinese developed when Altaic peoples became sinicized, and that while they
adopted Chinese lexicon and morphology they retained the syntax of Altaic, and
possibly its phonetic system as well. This must be a two-step process however:
presumably what is meant by Altaicization follows on as the next step after cultural
sinicization, whereby the superstrate Altaic syntactic structures slowly diffuse into the
different varieties of Northern Chinese and then gradually southwards into other
Sinitic languages by virtue of the prestige of Mandarin. He observes that this is not
unique to northern Chinese: the Ong-Bê language of southwestern China, a Tai
language, has undergone the same process of sinicization (1986: 95), as too pre-war
Korea with respect to the effect of Japanese on Korean.
Matisoff (1991: 386; this volume) refines Hashimoto’s basic classification by
dividing the larger Southeast Asian zone into two main areas: the Sinospheric and the
non-Sinospheric. The Sinospheric area includes Southern Sinitic (basically Sinitic
languages south of the Yangzi) and the language families which have been in close
cultural contact with China such as Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai, Vietnamese in the
Mon-Khmer branch of Austroasiatic, and certain branches of Tibeto-Burman such as
Lolo-Burmese. The non-Sinospheric languages include Austronesian languages,
many Mon-Khmer languages, and Tibeto-Burman languages, for example those
found in Northeastern India and Nepal.
According to Matisoff (1991) some of the broad grammatical features which
unify the Southeast Asian area into a linguistic zone are the following:

1) development of modal verbs > desiderative markers, ‘be likely to’

2) development of verbs meaning ‘to dwell’ > progressive aspect markers
3) development of verbs meaning ‘to finish’ > perfective aspect markers

8
4) development of verbs meaning ‘to get, obtain’ > ‘manage’, ‘able to’, ‘have to’
5) development of verbs of giving > causative and benefactive markers
6) development of verbs of saying > complementizers, topic and conditional
markers
7) formation of resultative and directional compound verbs through verb
concatenation

With respect to Sinitic, all of these pathways of grammaticalization apply to

Northern Chinese as well, with the exception of a ‘say’ verb developing into a
complementizer and the limited use of ‘give’ with a causative meaning. Both these
paths of grammaticalization are treated in §4 for Southern Sinitic languages while
other pathways, such as for get verbs, are analysed in depth in Enfield (this volume).
Next, I discuss some linguistic phenomena that are the result of language contact,
illustrating some of the potential difficulties for modeling the outcomes of language
contact including stratification, metatypy, hybridization and convergence.

3. Language contact: stratification, hybridization and convergence

Synchronically, there are three main outcomes of language contact situations for
Sinitic languages: stratification, hybridization and convergence. Examples of all three
outcomes are discussed in this main section. Stratification and hybridization of
syntactic and morphosyntactic forms are a widespread phenomenon in Sinitic
languages.

3.1 Stratification
Stratification has resulted from the systematic introduction of certain features of the
prestige language in China for the purposes of reciting classical texts; or as forms
borrowed from this standard language (different varieties of Mandarin). Moreover,
this has occurred more than once in the historical development of several of the major
Chinese dialect groups such as Min which has three such layerings from Northern
Chinese: the Han dynasty stratum (206 BC – 220 AD); the Nanbeichao stratum (420-
581 AD) and the late Tang stratum (8th – 10th centuries). The degree of stratification
varies along a continuum from minor phonological differences, as in Hakka, to major
stratification of the lexicon and a marked contrast between the literary and colloquial
pronunciations as in Southern Min. The differences in pronunciation are known as

9
wén-bái yì-dú 文白异读 in Chinese linguistics. The bái or vernacular pronunciation
for each syllable in a given dialect represents the native morpheme which may or may
not have a wén or reading doublet whose pronunciation has been adopted from
Northern Chinese.
For example, in the Xiamen or Amoy dialect of Southern Min words in the
reading pronunciation which end in a velar nasal often have a nasalized vowel in the
cognate colloquial form: the character for ‘name’,名, has the literary form bêng
versus colloquial miâ n. In other cases the relationship is not so straightforward: the
preposition ‘to, with’ written as 共 has kā as its colloquial pronunciation but kiōng as
its reading pronunciation, with the latter closer to the modern standard Mandarin
/kuŋ/1 in form. Similarly, the possessive morpheme 其 has ê for its colloquial
pronunciation but kî for its literary one, closer to Mandarin /t˛’i/2. In many cases, it
first needs to be established whether there is any cognacy at all. There clearly is none
for the suppletive relationship between these possessive morphemes, nor for the two
readings of the diminutive suffix 仔 which has á for the colloquial as opposed to tsú
for the literary. Again, the reading form resembles modern standard Mandarin very
closely, which is /tsı/3. As argued below, the diminutive suffix has evolved from
another morpheme for ‘son’ in Min: kián.
Most non-Mandarin Sinitic languages show this kind of phonological and
lexical stratification as a result of different periods of intense contact with Mandarin,
particularly with the emergence of an official court language in the mid- to late- Tang
period (eighth to tenth centuries AD), a koine based on the language of the capital,
Chang’an, where a northwestern dialect of Northern Chinese waıııs spoken. This was
brought to southern regions during the migrations of the later Tang dynasty and is the
basis of the reading or literary pronunciation in most Southern Sinitic languages, as
noted above. In some dialect groups, a second overlay of a more eastern variety of
Northern Chinese occurred after the establishment of the Liao (916-1125 CE), Jin
(1115-1234 CE) and Yuan dynasties (1271-1368 CE) in northern China, whose
capitals were located in the region of Beijing. It is significant that both koines are
associated with flourishing vernacular literatures (Norman 1988) and the strong
tendency to standardize language use that accompanies the consolidation of an
imperial system of government. More traditional research has mainly concentrated on
describing the phonological correspondences between the reading and colloquial

10
pronunciations of characters. Recent pioneering work on syntax by Zhu Dexi (1990)
and Anne Yue-Hashimoto (1991) has uncovered several different strata for the syntax
of interrogative forms in Southern Sinitic (see §3.2.3). For the purposes of any kind
of comparative work, the native stratum must first be clearly separated from the
imported stratum.

3.2 Lexical and morphological stratification

Lien’s study of morphological change in Taiwanese Southern Min (to appear) shows
that this historical process of layering has resulted in different kinds of stratificational
distinctions in the lexicon for the native colloquial morphemes versus the ‘alien’
literary forms. Taiwanese Southern Min belongs to the subdivision of Coastal Min
and is closely related to the Xiamen (Amoy), Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects
spoken on the south coast of Fujian province. It is the first language of over seventy
three per cent of the population in Taiwan, despite the fact that Mandarin is the
official language.
As Lien observes, since this variation is present in everyday colloquial
language, it cannot simply be explained as the existence of separate registers resulting
from the impact of Mandarin on Southern Min during the Tang period. He discusses
cases of morphological competition which have been synchronically resolved in
favour of either the colloquial or literary stratum and concludes on the basis of his
data that the diffusion is clearly bidirectional.
For example, the morpheme lâng 儂‘person’ represents the first type where
this colloquial form is in the ascendant over the literary and unproductive bound
morpheme jîn 人 which also means ‘person’ but was borrowed from the Tang
Northern Chinese koine. It is not cognate with lâng. Couplets thus exist, such as toā
lâng 大儂 ‘adult’ versus tāi jîn 大人‘police officer’(a polite vocative akin to ‘Sir’),
where both are formed with morphemes for ‘big’ + ‘person’. This is indicative, Lien
argues, of jîn developing a special idiomatic meaning in many of its compounds. The
literary morpheme jîn generally occurs with less frequency as a suffix than lâng,
according to a statistical count made by Lien. It is much less likely to occur affixed to
disyllabic stems, and never with those from the colloquial stratum. Furthermore, in
coining new words, he notes, the younger generation prefers the native morpheme
lâng.

11
 Similarly, for numerals, the colloquial forms are used for cardinal numbers
while the literary forms are used for giving telephone numbers and for calendar years
in the Gregorian or western calendar. Lien observes, however, that in the case of
ordinal numbers, the colloquial forms are winning out from the lexeme ‘third’
upwards. He attributes this outcome to the lack of literacy in the native language,
Taiwanese Southern Min, as opposed to high literacy in the official language,
Mandarin: it is nowadays rare for younger generation first-language speakers of
Taiwanese to be instructed in the reading pronunciations and forms of Southern Min.
The second type, where the literary form is more productive than the
colloquial form, is represented by suffixes which are in complementary distribution
such as colloquial ke versus literary ka (which share the etymon for ‘family’家).
These are used as agentive suffixes or nominalizers but, significantly, in different
semantic fields: the first, colloquial form ke shows a broader application as it is used
not only for family relationships but also for those pertaining to the old agrarian
society such as head-servant and master and names for relatives in-law while the
second, literary form ka applies to higher status professions of the new industrialized
society such as writer, connoisseur, diplomat, statesperson. Nonetheless, colloquial
ke has become ‘inert’ and unproductive.
Similarly, colloquial sai-hū versus literary su act as agentive suffixes, the first
referring to trades and crafts that require manual labour, while the second refers to
professions that require intellectual skills. This is shown in the following two tables
reproduced from Lien (in press):
Table 1: Derivatives with colloquial suffix sai-hū 师傅 in Southern Min
Agent noun Gloss Translation
thô.-chúi sai-hū mud-water-master bricklayer
涂水师傅
chúi-tièn sai-hū water-electricity- electrician/plumber
水电师傅 master

iû-chhat sai-hū oil-paint-master painter

油漆师傅

bak-chhiūn sai-hū wood-wright- carpenter

木匠师傅 master

12
 Table 2: Derivatives with literary suffix su 师
Agent noun Gloss Translation
i-su 医师 treat medically- doctor
master
kàu-su 教师 teach-master teacher

ūi-su 画师 draw-master artist

káng-su 讲师 talk-master instructor

Both these cases contrast with the outcome for the competition between
morphemes for ‘person’ in that the literary form is very productive, and a clear
semantic division of labour is apparent. Lien characterizes the colloquial stratum as
typified by basic and popular vocabulary, versus the technical and cultural vocabulary
representative of the literary stratum. Despite this mixing and integration of the
literary stratum into everyday language, convergence of the two strata is not likely,
particularly where the semantic specialization of the two sets has occurred, as for ke
and ka and sai-hū and su. Lien concludes that only a bidirectional diffusion of
features can explain the continuing co-existence of these strata.

3.3 Syntactic stratification: preverbal interrogative markers

Zhu (1990) and Yue-Hashimoto (1991) discuss the complementary distribution in
Sinitic languages of neutral interrogative constructions using the Northern Sinitic
strategy of VP-NEG-VP as opposed to Southern Sinitic constructions using either a
preverbal interrogative adverb (ADV-VP) or a VP-NEG-(PARTICLE) form for this
type of Yes/No question. These interrogatives are described as neutral in terms of any
presupposition concerning the response. The type which uses the ADV-VP form is
found in some Southern Min and Wu dialects but also in certain Southwestern and
Lower Yangtze Mandarin dialects of Anhui province, while the VP-NEG-
(PARTICLE) form is characteristic of Hakka and Yue dialects.
Yue-Hashimoto is able to pinpoint different strata for these interrogative
structures by comparing several colloquial Southern Min texts from the Ming and
Qing dynasties (dating from the sixteenth century onwards) written in the Chaozhou

13
and Quanzhou dialects. Her analysis of these texts enables her to resolve apparent
counterexamples where certain Min dialects possess all three strategies described
above and thus seem to belie this basic Northern versus Southern distinction. She
argues that the ADV-VP form using the adverbial interrogatives kě 可 or qǐ 岂
belongs to a residual premodern colloquial stratum found in certain Southern Min
dialects such as Yilan in Taiwan and Shantou (Swatow) in Northeastern Guangdong
province, China. This contrasts with the form of VP-NEG-(PARTICLE) which has
been in use over many centuries and represents a standard and native Southern Min
stratum, while VP-NEG-VP represents the non-native stratum which has been
borrowed from Northern Chinese. Further comparisons with non-Sinitic languages
are made: the ADV-VP form is commonly found in Tibeto-Burman while the VP-
NEG form is typical of Kam-Tai, though languages in both families show use of the
VP-NEG-VP strategy which overall appears to have the widest distribution in Sino-
Tibetan, presumably through diffusion.

3.4 Syntactic hybrids and metatypy

Another consequence of language contact is the mixing or hybridization of syntactic
forms. There are many clearcut cases of this in Sinitic languages where native and
borrowed syntactic strategies are eclectically combined into the one new form. This is
quite distinct from the situation known as metatypy (Ross 1996) where the syntactic
configuration for a construction is borrowed from the prestige language entailing the
calquing of its grammatical exponents by the appropriate morphemes. When
metatypy occurs, it may replace the native strategy (if there is one - see §4.3 on
complementizers below) or it may be used side-by-side with this native form,
possibly in different speech levels or registers. Hong Kong Cantonese shows an
unusual case of retention of the native form, in combination with metatypy and
hybridization for the relative clause construction which I next examine.
Matthews and Yip (in press) have coined the useful term of ditaxia which
refers to the parallel use of two syntactic structures in different registers. This lays the
basis for analysing a third peculiar construction for the relative clause which has
made a recent appearance in Hong Kong Cantonese. The two main relative clause
structures can be thus described: colloquial Cantonese employs classifiers as relative
markers as in (1) while formal Cantonese employs a structure using the possessive

14
ge3 which mirrors the use of Mandarin de as a relativizer. Compare the following two
examples:

(1) Colloquial Cantonese: Relative Clause + DET + CL + HEAD NP

佢 唱 嗰 首 歌 好 好 听
Koei5 coeng3 go2 sau2 go1 hou2 hou2 teng1
3sg sing that CL song very good listen
‘the song she sings is very nice’

(2) Formal Cantonese: Relative Clause + GEN + HEAD NP

佢 唱 嘅 歌
Koei5 coeng3 ge3 go1
3sg sing PRT song
'the song(s) she sings'

Typologically, the relational, including possessive, use of the classifier in

colloquial Cantonese given in (1) is characteristic of other southern Chinese dialect
groups such as Southern Min but also of Tai and Hmong-Mien languages, showing
further evidence of the affinity among the Sinospheric languages (see Bisang 1992).
The construction in (2) is an example of metatypy based on the prestige language,
Mandarin. A third and innovative construction represents a hybridization of these
two, where both the classifier and ge3 are present with the form [DET + CL + GEN
(=ge3) + N]:

(3) Hybridization: Relative Clause + DET + CL + GEN + HEAD NP

佢 唱 嗰 首 嘅 歌
Koei5 coeng3 go2 sau2 ge3 go1
3sg sing that CL PRT song
'the song she sings'

At this point, a reasonable surmise might be that such examples of Cantonese

show a lack of mastery over the newer Mandarinized form of the relative clause
structure. It is interesting to learn, however, that the hybrid relative clause

15
construction tends to be used in more formal and public registers such as broadcasting
and sermons, and is therefore classified as pseudo-High in register by Matthews and
Yip. Possibly it serves a double purpose: on the one hand it has an emblematic status
for Cantonese speakers - it can be used to show linguistic solidarity and Cantonese
identity by retaining the classifier as a marker of the relative clause - yet on the other
hand speakers retain the use of ‘posh’ Cantonese by means of the counterpart of the
Mandarin relative clause, which uses the genitive marker ge3 (see Aikhenvald, this
volume, on the topic of emblematicity). An explanation involving syntactic
hypercorrection does not appear to be relevant in this case.
A similar phenomenon can be observed in both Taiwanese Southern Min and
Hakka for the comparative construction where the native strategy using an adverb
‘more’ is combined with the cognate for Mandarin bǐ 比‘compare’ (see Ansaldo
1999 on this kind of double-marking). Zhu (1990) also examines a hybrid structure
for neutral Yes/No questions where an adverbial interrogative marker is used together
with a VP-NEG-VP form. This is found in some Lower Yangtze Mandarin dialects,
in the Suzhou dialect (Wu) and in the Shantou dialect (Southern Min) (see also
§3.2.3). Similarly, Chappell (1992b and in press [c]) notes hybridization for the
evidential (or experiential aspect) marker in Taiwanese Southern Min, where the
native strategy of a preverbal marker bat 别 from the verb ‘know’ is combined with
the verb enclitic koè, calqued on Mandarin guò 过‘cross, pass through’.

3.5 Sùliào pŭtōnghuà 塑料普通话 ‘the plastic common language’

Wu (1992) describes a variety of Changsha Mandarin called sùliào or ‘plastic’
pǔ tōnghuà’ in which convergence is taking place between the local Xiang dialect
and the official language, pŭtōnghuà. Pŭtōnghuà literally ‘the common language’, is
based on the pronunciation of educated speakers of the prestige dialect of Beijing
Mandarin in combination with the vocabulary and grammar of model works of
vernacular literature written in Northern Chinese dialects. This definition was
promulgated for the official language of China in 1955 (Chen 1999: 25). Speakers
prefer to use Changsha Xiang but in official and formal situations they are
encouraged to use pŭtōnghuà. Although the convergence is unidirectional - in the
direction of Mandarin - it is far from complete.

16
 When speakers accommodate to pŭtōnghuà, a language over which they may
not have full command, a special tone correspondence is set up which neither belongs
to the Changsha Xiang dialect nor to pŭtōnghuà, yet symbolizes that speakers have
adopted an official speech level which is as close as they can possibly come to
pŭtōnghuà. Even when non-standard lexical items are used, specific to the Xiang
dialect, or speakers are unable to distinguish velar from alveolar nasal endings, let
alone retroflexes from dental sibilants (as they should in standard Mandarin), the
mere fact that they are using this special tone correspondence suffices for their speech
to be considered ‘official’, that is, as plastic pŭtōnghuà.
By way of contrast, if speakers use the right lexicon and grammar for
pŭtōnghuà but retain their own Changsha Xiang tone pattern, their speech remains
irredeemably Changsha Xiang. The reason is as follows: first, it needs to be noted
that Changsha Xiang has seven tones, whereas both plastic pŭtōnghuà and ‘real’
pŭtōnghuà have only four. Wu (1992: 137-138) explains how the correspondences
between the Middle Chinese sources for the modern tones in standard Mandarin and
colloquial Changsha Xiang differ. Changsha speakers base their rules for conversion
of Xiang tones into plastic pŭtōnghuà on the historical relationships for their own
dialect with Middle Chinese. It is this local interpretation which has created the
special tone correspondences that act as a marker of plastic pŭtōnghuà.
In the final section, I examine the outcomes of language change: are pathways
of grammaticalization triggered by a certain set of typological preconditions in the
given language; is it due to areal diffusion of a morphosyntactic feature or, more
broadly, merely attributable to common language universals of grammatical change?

4. Shared grammaticalization pathways in Sinitic, areal diffusion and

language universals
In this section, I examine five sets of data in Sinitic: the source of the diminutive
suffix, the feature of negative existential verbs ‘there is not/there are not’, the
development of complementizers from verbs of saying, adversative passives and
some constructions which express inalienable possession. Some of these
phenomena unify Sinitic as a family while others bear witness to the grouping of
languages in the Southeast and East Asia zone as a Sprachbund or linguistic area.
In this section, the attempt is made to distinguish which features represent a
pathway of grammaticalization that is crosslinguistically unremarkable, which are

17
the result of areal diffusion, and which could be seen as special typological
features of Sinitic languages.
4.1. Early Southern Min dialect grammar and evidence for grammaticalization:
the diminutive
Early 17th century texts on Southern Min dialects provide an invaluable source for
the diachronic study of the grammar of their modern counterparts in that they are
largely written in the special dialect characters for vernacular Hokkien. Below, I
compare the diminutive of modern Southern Min dialects such as Taiwanese and
Amoy (Xiamen) with those found in the Arte de la lengua Chiõ Chiu (1620), a
grammar on the same type of dialect written in Spanish.iv
In Sinitic languages, the diminutive has its source in various morphemes
for ‘son’ which may have ‘child’ as a secondary meaning. A morpheme for ‘child’
is the common source crosslinguistically for diminutives (see Heine et al 1991: 79-
88; 1993: 38). For example, Mandarin uses the suffix ‘ <ér兒 ‘son’ while

Cantonese employs tone sandhi, changing the citation tone to high rising tone, the
cheshirization of an earlier segmental morpheme meaning ‘son’. Cheshirization
refers to the attrition of segmental phonemes, which leave a mere trace of their
former phonetic substance, such as the tone.v In Taiwanese Southern Min, the
diminutive is formed with the suffix -á. It can be related to the lexeme for ‘son’, 子
kǐan, used in the Arte (1620: 2b, 11a,12b) and to kián ‘son’ in contemporary
Taiwanese and Amoy, for which the character 囝 is used as well.vi Note that the
stem of the word used for ‘child’ in the Arte —简仔 kǐn nǐa (1620: 15) or 囝仔
gín-á ~ gín-ná in contemporary Taiwanese — cannot be the source for this
diminutive on phonological grounds (see Lien 1998).
In the early 17th century grammar of Southern Min, the following
description is given for the diminutive (1620:10):

(4) Arte de la lengua Chiõ Chiu (1620)

“The diminutive is formed with the final particle ia or nia or guia:
kéiguìa 圭仔 ‘little chicken’ [pollito]
bôguìa 帽仔 ‘little hat’ [sonbrerillo]
tóguìa 刀仔 ‘little knife’[guedillito].”

18
In contemporary Taiwanese, the three corresponding words are ke-á ‘chicken, little
chicken’; bō-á ‘hat’ and to-á ‘knife, small knife’ respectively, indicating partial
bleaching of the diminutive feature.vii
I suggest that in this early grammar of Southern Min, the Arte, an incipient
stage of development for the diminutive can be viewed, where its form can still be
clearly related to the morpheme for ‘son’, unlike contemporary Southern Min
where the form has atrophied to -á and can be used not only as a diminutive but
also as a marker for the noun category:

(5) Taiwanese Southern Min:

一 张 桌仔 合 两 张 椅仔
chit tè toh-á kap n g tè í-á

one CL table and two CL chair

‘a table and two chairs’ (not: ‘a small table and two small chairs’)

It is interesting to find that the lexeme kián can nonethelesss still be used as a kind
of suffix to mark the young of animal species, postposed after the reduced
diminutive form:

(6) 牛仔囝 狗仔囝

gû-á-kián káu-á-kián
ox-DIMN-offspring dog-DIMN-offspring
‘calf’ ‘puppy’

Further support for the proposed grammaticalization pathway of ‘son’ >

DIMINUTIVE comes from Yang (1991: 166) who points out that the diminutive
suffix in the Chaozhou dialect of Southern Min retains the full form of kián.

19
(7) 鼎仔 Chaozhou:tian kián contrasting with Xiamen, Zhangzhou,
Taiwanese: tian-á.
‘a small cooking pot’

Yang also quotes the Tang poet 顾况 Gu Kuang who annotates the character 囝 ,
pronounced with an alveopalatal initial / t˛iǎ n/ in modern Mandarin, as having the

meaning ‘son’ in colloquial Min in §13 of his poem 上古之什 Shànggŭzhīshé.

(8) 囝 音 蹇 闽 俗 呼 子 为 囝.
Jiǎ n yīn jiǎ n mǐn sù hū zǐ wéi jiǎn
(word) sound jian Min custom call son as jian
“The sound of this character 囝 is jiǎ n, the Min usually call ‘son’ jiǎ n.”

The more general case of semantic change from ‘child’ to diminutive

morpheme is well-attested in other languages of the world, for example, in
Jurafsky (1996) and Heine et al (1993: 38) while the use of diminutives with
probable source morphemes in sex-specific ‘son’ is characteristic of Sinitic (for
more data, see Huang 1996). The Arte provides the hard evidence for this semantic
change into a diminutive suffix, affecting the morpheme ‘son’ in Southern Min
(see also Chappell in press [b]). Given the widespread occurrence of the first type
of conceptual shift cross linguistically, I conclude that while this more
semantically specific case may be a shared development in Sinitic languages, it
only partially characterizes it typologically.

4.2. Negative existential constructions: ‘there is no/there are no’

Southern Sinitic languages display a large number of negative morphemes which
can be used to negate propositions at clause-level. Furthermore, the semantic space
for negation is carved up by subtle modal and aspectual nuances. In particular,
Southern Min languages show a highly differentiated set of negative adverbs, most
being fused forms combining one of the first two negatives listed in Table 3 with
various modal verbs and showing different degrees of bondedness:

20
Table 3: Taiwanese Southern Min negative markers:
bô+ V 無 Negation of perfective contexts, attributive predicates

+V 唔 Negative marker for property verbs, imperfective

contexts & unwillingness to V

(iá) bē+ V (猶)未 Negation of expectation: ‘have not (yet) V-ed’
boē+ V 勿会 Negation of ability/possibility to V: ‘unable to V’
boài+ V 勿爱 Negation of perfective desiderative: 'didn’t want to V’
mài+V 唔爱 Negation of imperfective desiderative: ‘don’t want to V’

mài+ V 莫 Negative imperative: ‘Don’t V!’

mó+ V 唔爱 Negative hortative: ‘You shouldn’t V!’

bién + V 唔免 Negation of necessity: ‘You don’t need to V’

In Sinitic, it is typically the marker used to negate perfective clauses which also
has a fully verbal use meaning there is no Y/there are no Y with one nominal
argument. This set of verbs in Southern Sinitic can also occur in a transitive
syntactic frame as the negative possessive verb: X has no Y. I describe the semantic
and syntactic features of negative existential verbs in more detail in Chappell
(1994) and observe that their prior lexical meaning is often ‘lose’ as exemplified
by (9) for Cantonese 冇 mou5 where the meaning is ambiguous between the two
uses:

(9) Cantonese:
已经 冇 哩 個 嘅 权势 啊
yi5ging1 mou5 lei5 goh3 ge3, kuen4sai3 a1
already NEGV this CL PRT power PRT
‘(This prime minister) had already lost his power.’ OR:
‘The prime minister no longer had any power.’

Standard Mandarin does not possess such a negative existential or negative

possessive verb. It must use the negative perfective marker méi preposed before
the verb yǒu ‘there is’, shown in (10).

21
(10) Mandarin:
没 (有 ) 人 了
méi (yǒu) rén le
NEG (there:be) person CRS
‘There’s nobody here.’

Omission of yǒu ‘there is’ is possible but should not be confused with an analysis of méi
as a monomorphemic negative existential verb (which it is not), since yǒu can always be
added back in. It appears that the same situation applies in many Tibeto-Burman
languages where a negative adverb or prefix beginning with m- is used (see Matisoff
1991: 388, 393-394), and also in Thai. In other words, these languages similarly do not
have a special negative existential verb. Hence, this is a Southern Sinitic feature, not
attested in either northern Chinese or evidently in the other half of the Sino-Tibetan
language family. It is neither a Sinospheric typological feature nor a pan-Sinitic one. Nor
is it well-documented cross-linguistically, given that Payne (1985) discusses this type of
negation for only a few Austronesian languages but does not include it as a negation
type.

4.3 Complementizers
In Taiwanese Southern Min, a complementizer similar in function to English that has
grammaticalized out of the verb ‘to say’ kóng 講. Matisoff (1991: 398-400) describes
this path of grammaticalization as an example of the general category of verbs
developing into verb particles in Southeast Asian languages, represented by Thai,
Khmer and Lahu. Like these three languages, the Southern Min verb ‘say’ is also
used at the end of a non-final clause and before the intonation break to introduce the
complement clause. It is not fully grammaticalized since it may be omitted.
Moreover, it forms a kind of verb complex with the preceding matrix verb which
must belong to one of the following verb classes: speech act, cognition or perception,
and it directly introduces the embedded clause, as in (11):

22
(11) Taiwanese Southern Min
遐 個 敌对 的 武将 共 笑 講
Hia ê <MC: díduì > ê búchiòng kā chhiò kóng,
that CL opposing L general PRETR laugh SAYthat

这 是 号作 <J:猴面 冠者>.
che sì hō-tsò <J: Sarumen Kanja >.
this be name:as monkey:face youngster

‘Those generals who opposed him mocked him (General Toyotomi) as the
one who should be called “monkey-face boy”.’ [Japanese tales 629-630]
(Note: MC = Mandarin Chinese insert; J = Japanese insert)

In this first stage of grammaticalization, when say verbs are used as quotative
markers, the lexical meaning is not completely bleached. Examples such as chhiò
kóng could still be rendered as ‘laughed (at him) saying’ while in the second stage
where kóng is used with cognitive verbs such as siūn ‘think’, its literal meaning is less
plausible: ‘think saying’. The putative path of development is outlined in Chappell (in
press [e]) in addition to other grammaticalized or partially grammaticalized uses of
kóng as a metalinguistic marker of explanation; an evidential marker of hearsay; a
component of a compound conditional marker; a topic introducer and as a clause-
final marker of assertions and warnings. It has not yet developed a purposive
function, which may indicate that certain of its several grammaticalization pathways
are relatively ‘young’ (Bernd Heine pers. comm.).
There has been only very little study of this phenomenon in typological work
on Sinitic languages to date. In Chappell (in press [e]), I show that this development
has proceeded as far as the quotative stage in some Yue and Wu dialects and to a
lesser extent in standard Mandarin. For the Yue dialect of Cantonese, ample evidence
can be found of the use of wa6 ‘to speak’ in conversational and narrative texts where
it functions as such a quotative marker with speech act verbs. Note, however, that wa6
does not form a verb complex with the preceding speech act verb: this is clear in the
fact that it can be separated from the verb by a noun denoting the direct object:

23
(12) Cantonese
赞 哩 個 男仔 话...
jaan3 lei5 goh3 laam4jai2 wa6…
praise this CL young:man say…
“(She) praised this young man saying...”

Although a verb complex with ‘say’ as V2 is not a possible strategy for

introducing complement clauses in standard Beijing Mandarin, or pǔtōnghuà (as
opposed to such a use for quotations), it is in the regional variety known as
Taiwanese Mandarin. It is striking that Taiwanese Mandarin does not choose the
cognate verb for kóng, which is jiǎng in Mandarin, to create the new syntactic calque
but instead makes use of its functional equivalent, the high frequency verb shuō 说, in
the configuration NOUN - SUBJECT - VERB1 - shuō + CLAUSE:

(13) Taiwanese Mandarin

那 我 希望 说 这 個 愿望
nà wǒ xīwàng shuō zhèi ge yuànwàng
CONJ 1SG hope SAYcomp this CL wish

很 快 就 到 了
hěn kuài jiù dào le
very quickly then arrive PFV
‘So I hope that this wish will be realised very soon.’

(14) Beijing Mandarin

*我 希望 说
* wǒ xīwàng shuō
1SG hope say

However, this does not provide supporting evidence just for the North-South divide
for Sinitic languages: it appears that Sinitic is encircled by language families and

24
language isolates (such as Japanese and Korean) that all possess complementizers
which have developed from verbs of saying. This feature has been described in the
relevant literature for individual languages belonging to Tibeto-Burman, Tai-Kadai,
Hmong-Mien, Indic, Dravidian and Altaic (see Matisoff 1991, Saxena 1988).
Since this semantic change is also crosslinguistically well-attested (it occurs
widely in various language families of Africa - see Frajzyngier 1996 for Chadic,
Amberber 1995 for Amharic, Heine et al 1991: 216-7; 246-7; Heine et al 1993: 190-8
for a larger sample of languages), it seems that the grammaticalization of kóng into a
complementizer in Taiwanese Southern Min is most likely a language internal
development. It has simply drawn on its own resources (Dixon 1997) to recreate a
syntactic device which was in fact available in Classical and Middle Chinese, as
attested in the written register.
Indeed, earlier periods of written Chinese made use of verbs of saying such as
yuē 曰(Classical Chinese) and dào 道(Medieval Chinese) as quotative markers,
although not as fully-fledged complementizers (described in Chappell in press [e]).
This means that not only does Sinitic have its own inherited language-internal devices
upon which to analogize but it also has access to patterns and processes which can be
imitated from surrounding unrelated language families.
It seems that this has taken place in recent times for sister languages within
Sinitic, the case in point being the calquing of the Taiwanese Southern Min
complementizer into Taiwanese Mandarin. This is an unusual development in terms
of the direction of metatypy from a less prestigious to a more prestigious language
and note that there are many other examples of Taiwanese Southern Min
constructions which have been borrowed into the Taiwanese variety of Mandarin (see
Kubler 1985). This probably reflects linguistic creativity in transferring favoured
syntactic forms and devices into Mandarin where gaps exist, rather than a negative
description in terms of interference from L2.
Further research on dialect materials would be in order to show irrefutable
evidence for the view that the development of a complementizer in Taiwanese
Southern Min is a purely independent innovation, triggered however by a
combination of factors: a conducive environment in terms of areal typological
features and the existence of appropriate language internal characteristics.

25
 Unlike the case for negative existential verbs, the existence of a
complementizer in Southern Min and some Wu and Yue dialects tallies well with
Matisoff’s inclusion of Southern Sinitic in the Southeast Asian linguistic area. The
theoretical problem remains however of distinguishing areal diffusion from a putative
language universal for the development of complementizers from verbs of saying,
given the right typological preconditions.

4.4. Adversative Passives

Matisoff (1991) points out that verbs of giving typically develop into causatives and
benefactives in Southeast Asian languages. In Southern Sinitic languages, verbs of
giving are also used to form the passive construction. For example, most Hakka
dialects use the high frequency verb pun 44‘to give’ as both the passive and the
benefactive marker, while Cantonese does the same with bei2 < ‘give’.
A further characteristic feature of passives which unites Sinitic is that the
colloquial forms are both adversative and agentful. This appears to be an unusual
development for ‘give’ (compare this with data in Heine et al 1993: 97-103). Such a
description applies to standard Mandarin as well where only the bèi passive has an
agentless form although it has lost its adversative feature in some contexts. Note that
the bèi passive belongs to more formal discourse, in contrast with the agentive
colloquial passives formed by jiào ‘make’ and ràng ‘let’ (see Chappell 1986).
Norman (1982: 245) observes that these two Northern Chinese passives
formed with the causative verbs jiào ‘make’ and ràng ‘let’ are unique amongst Sinitic
languages, as opposed to the use of verbs of giving. He argues that this is not an
independent development in Mandarin but rather is due to Manchu superstrate
influence on Chinese. In Manchu and other Altaic languages, the same structure can
be used for both passive and causative meanings. In support of this view, an earlier
study by Hashimoto (1987: 46) contrasts standard Mandarin with Mandarin dialects
on the periphery of the Northern Chinese zone which continue to use verbs of giving
as passive markers. This suggests that give verbs as passive markers are an older
feature.
The adversative feature appears to be an areal feature as not only do Southeast
Asian languages such as Thai and Vietnamese show this restriction, but also Japanese
(see Shibatani 1994). Hence, there are different allegiances for each of these features:
some evince the North-South divide in Sinitic (verbs of giving versus causative verbs

26
used as passive exponents), some are relevant to the Southeast and East Asian area
(the adversative feature), while this particular development for ‘give’ is possibly
specific to Southern Sinitic within the Asian zone, and is quite rare crosslinguistically
(Bernd Heine pers. comm.).

4.5 Possession
4.5.1 Pronominal systems and inalienable possession
In general there are no separate morphological classes for alienable and inalienable
possession in Sinitic languages; nonetheless, there is a weaker reflection of this
distinction in the fact that genitive marking is facultative for kin relationships as well
as other important social relationships, body parts and spatial orientation, particularly
when the possessor is pronominal (see Chappell & Thompson 1992 on Mandarin
genitives):

PRONOUN POSSESSOR (genitive NOUN POSSESSED

marker)

(15) Mandarin

你 (的) 母亲 先生 (的) 耳朵 里
nǐ (de) mǔqin xiānsheng (de) ěrduo li
2sg (GEN) mother teacher (GEN) ear in
‘your mother’ ‘in the teacher’s ears’

Hakka is unusual within Sinitic in having a special portmanteau genitive form for
pronominal possessors which can be considered as a kind of case marker:

Table 4: Meixian Hakka pronouns

Nom/Acc Genitive
1SG ŋai11 崖 ŋa44

2SG ŋ11 你 ŋia44

3SG ki11 佢 kia44

27
These special genitive forms are not generally used, however, with inanimate nouns
such as ‘fountain pen’ in (17) but, again typically, with kin as in (16):

(16) 我 老弟
ŋa44 lau31-t‘ai44
1sg younger:brother
‘my younger brother’

With inanimate nouns, as in example (17), the genitive marker ke is used with the
Nom/Acc form of the pronominal possessor:

(17) 我 嘅 钢笔
ŋai11 ke53 kongbit11
1sg GEN pen
‘my fountain pen’ (*ŋa44 Ø kong53bit11)

This semi-covert distinction is reflected more clearly in syntax in the form of the
double patient construction, discussed next.

4.5.2. Double patient constructions

The double patient construction is shared by all Sinitic languages. It is syntactically
unusual in that the intransitive process verb appears to take two arguments, one more
than the verb valency should allow, recalling the ‘one-too-many-argument’ problem
described in Shibatani (1994). The two arguments of the intransitive verb designate
possessor and possessum. Furthermore, the nouns in this possessive relationship
occur non-contiguously and belong to different constituents. Specifically, the
possessor appears in the canonical position for grammatical subject (S) clause-
initially, while the possessum appears postverbally in the canonical object position
(O). The verb must be a so-called ‘unaccusative’ non-volitional one such as ‘go red’,
‘go white’, ‘limp’, ‘increase’ (literally: ‘become more’), ‘fall out’ or ‘rot’, which
takes a semantic undergoer as its subject. An example of this construction from
Cantonese is given with its structural formula:

28
Double patient construction:
NOUNPOSSESSOR VERBINTRANSITIVE NOUN PART/KIN TERM

(18) Cantonese Yue

棵 树 落 咗 好 多 叶
Poh1 sue6 lok6 joh2 ho2 doh1 yip6
CLREF tree fall PFV very many leaf
‘That tree has lost many leaves [more literally: The tree fell very many
leaves].’

In Chappell (1999), I argue that the relationship of inalienable possession licenses the
use of two arguments with an intransitive verb. It can only be used for part-whole
relations and, in a more restricted fashion, for kin. While this construction is a shared
feature of Sinitic, as with the study of complementizers, it has not been extensively
researched. The same situation applies for Southeast Asian languages: it is not
possible in Lahu (Matisoff pers. comm.) but a similar construction appears to exist in
Lao (Nicholas Enfield pers. comm.). At this stage, it is difficult to determine if such a
construction is typologically defining for Sinitic.

5. Conclusion
The family tree model appears to work reasonably well for Sinitic as far as phonology
and some aspects of morphology are concerned; nonetheless, this only accounts for a
small part of a much more complex linguistic picture: the family tree model is unable
to capture the effect of successive waves of Mandarinization of Southern Sinitic
languages, stratifying lexical and syntactic components as shown in §3 for nominal
affixes in Southern Min and interrogative constructions in Southern Sinitic languages.
Nor can it handle the cases where convergence is well under way with the
Mandarinization of Changsha Xiang, though be it by means of an intermediate
language known as sùliào or ‘plastic’ pŭtōnghuà. The initial stages of this process of
convergence includes widespread occurrence of metatypy and hybridization of
syntactic forms in Sinitic, as illustrated by the example of Hong Kong Cantonese
relative clause constructions. Hence, a more delicate and subtle treatment of the
question of genetic affiliation is needed.

29
 Note that the processes of metatypy and convergence may not always be in
the direction of the official language of prestige: in Taiwan, massive calquing and
metatypy from Southern Min into Taiwanese Mandarin is taking place, as briefly
described for the use of complementizers. It can be conjectured that this is because
Southern Min, and not Mandarin, is emblematic of current loyalties and serves as a
‘badge’ of being Taiwanese. Such developments involving language contact cannot
be easily captured in terms of genetic affiliation while they would skew the data in
any study using the comparative method.
§4 investigated the problems of determining whether certain syntactic and
morphological features could be the outcome of shared developments in a language
family, while others are simply the result of areal diffusion or are common
crosslinguistically, requiring no particular typological preconditions. Five areas of
morphosyntax were thus examined: similarities and differences with
crosslinguistically attested pathways of language change were described for the five
areas of diminutives, negatives, complementizers, passives and inalienable possession
with additional language-specific features being noted in some of these cases: first,
diminutive suffixes in Sinitic were shown to have their source not in a morpheme for
‘child’ but in the more sex-specific ‘son’ (which nonetheless may have the secondary
meaning of ‘child’ or ‘offspring’ in some, but not all, of these languages).
Second, the large inventory of negative markers in Sinitic languages was also
briefly described. The fact that these grammaticalize out of a fusion of basic negative
markers and modal verbs appears to be typologically unusual in the light of
crosslinguistic studies such as Payne (1985). Third, it was observed that
complementizers with a source in a verb of saying are common crosslinguistically
although the Southern Min development is relatively young, while that for Cantonese
Yue is only in an incipient stage. Fourth, passive exponents in Southern Sinitic
languages were described as typically having their source in verbs of giving, yet it is
unusual crosslinguistically for this type of passive to also express adversity and to
require an agent. Fifth, for the expression of inalienable possession at the level of
nominal syntax, the Meixian Hakka dialect presents an interesting and typologically
uncharacteristic case for Sinitic since it uses a portmanteau morpheme in precisely
this function. This distinction is typically covert in most Sinitic languages, and can at
best be only detected for syntactic constructions such as the one described above with
intransitive verbs and two patient nouns. Yet different pronouns and nominal

30
constructions to code alienable versus inalienable possession are very common
crosslinguistically (see Chappell & McGregor 1995).
To adequately reconstruct the history of a language family, a model is needed
which is significantly more sophisticated than the family tree based on the use of the
comparative method. It needs to incorporate the diffusion and layering process as
well as other language contact phenomena such as convergence, metatypy and
hybridization. The desideratum is a synthesis of all the processes that affect language
formation and development.

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ENDNOTES
i
Thanks to the following colleagues for comments and critique: Sasha Aikhenvald,
Tim Curnow, Bob Dixon, Nick Enfield, Geoffrey Haig, Bernd Heine,Tania Kuteva,
Randy LaPolla, Jim Matisoff, Alain Peyraube, Laurent Sagart and participants at the
workshop on “The connection between areal diffusion and the genetic model of
language relationship” held at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at ANU
in August 1998.
This research forms part of an Australian Research Council Large Grant
project “A semantic typology of complex syntactic constructions in Sinitic
languages” (1997-1999).
ii
I am indebted to Laurent Sagart for this clarification of Karlgren’s approach.
iii
For more discussion of the reconstructions for either Old or Middle Chinese, see
Norman (1988), also Baxter (1992) and Sagart (1999) and in press.
iv
This work was most likely a collaborative effort of Spanish Dominican missionaries
and Chinese interpreters living in a Chinese Sangley community near Manila in the
late 16th and early 17th centuries. On phonological grounds, Van der Loon identifies
the dialect used in these manuscripts as the vernacular of Hai-cheng as spoken around
the turn of the seventeenth century (1967:132). He shows conclusively that it differed
in certain phonological features from the dialect of Zhangzhou city, to which
prefecture this harbour town belonged. It appears that the Sangleys or Chinese traders
had migrated from this port in southern Fujian province during the late 16th century,
with many eventually settling in and around Manila.
v
See Matisoff (1991) for more on ‘cheshirization’, to whom we owe the coining of
this evocative term.
vi
This morpheme kiǎn ‘child, son’ is in fact used to exemplify the tone category
which is accompanied by nasalization, according to the missionaries’ classification.
Note that in the Spanish romanization k- is used interchangeably with gu-and qu- for
the unaspirated voiceless velar plosive initial /k/, as seen in the diminutive forms
given in (4). Furthermore, nasalization has not been marked for these diminutive
forms, suggesting that it had already been lost at this stage, in contrast to its lexical
use as ‘child’.
vii
Note that only one of the variants listed by the Arte is illustrated by the examples in
(4). This is discussed further in Chappell in press [b].

36