Summer School in Languages and Linguistics 2018

Leiden U5niversity, 9-20 July 2018

Chinese morphology
汉语的构词法
Giorgio F. ARCODIA Bianca BASCIANO
(马振国) (白夏侬)
University of Milano-Bicocca Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Outline of the course

1 The typology of Chinese. Morphemes, roots, words. BB

2 Compounding – I BB
3 Compounding - II BB
4 Compounding - III BB
5 Derivation GFA
6 Reduplication in Chinese (and beyond) BB
7 Word formation in Old and Middle Chinese BB

8 The Chinese lexicon. Historical strata in the Chinese lexicon. GFA

Neologisms and ‘buzzwords’. Lexical differences among
dialects
9 Grammaticalization in Chinese and Mainland Southeastasian GFA
Languages
10 Morphologization in Chinese dialects GFA
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Chinese(/Sinitic) as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, but

typologically part of the Mainland East and Southeast Asian Sprachbund

 DeLancey (2015): typological patterns in the verbal system of Tibeto-

Burman languages:
a. languages with very transparent and regular agglutinative morphology,
paradigmatically simple (Lolo-Burmese, Tibetic and Boro-Garo)
b. languages displaying morphologically complex verbs, with elaborate
argument indexation and transitivity management systems
➢ two subgroups: conservative languages with substantial archaic
morphology (Rgyalrongic, Kiranti)
languages displaying innovative paradigms (Kuki-Chin)
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Ex.: ‘predicate derivations’ (i.e. predicate markers with a broad range of

meanings, including result, manner, Aktionsart, direction, modality and
valence change) in the (dominantly agglutinating) the Tibeto-Burman
languages of Northeast India; depending on the language, predicate
derivations “may have anywhere from a few dozen to three or four
hundred members” (Post & Burling, 2017, p. 218)

ami ə=kom gok-ta-kɨ-ram-hɨ-kaa-to=î.

person IND=ADD call-INCP-TENT-FRUS-REFL-EXP-PFV=QTAG
‘The guy also tried in vain to have a go at calling, eh.’
(Minyong, a Tani language; Post & Sun, 2017: 330):
The areal typology of Sinitic

O 1SG 1DU 1PL 2SG 2DU 2PL 3SG 3DU 3PL

A Ex.: Transitive
1SG ta--n ta-- ta--jn -ŋ person-number
1DU n-dʒ -dʒ indices in
1PL -j
Jiaomuzu Situ
Rgyalrong
2SG tə-s-w
(DeLancey
2DU ko--ŋ ko-- ko--j tə--ndʒ 2015: 66)
2PL tə--jn
dʒ
 = verb stem
3SG wu-- wu-- wu--j to--n to-- to--jn -w -n-dʒ -jn

3DU ŋ dʒ n-dʒ -n- dʒ

3PL -jn
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Ex.: Sequences of derivational and inflectional prefixes in Rgyalrong (Sun

2014: 634)

tʰɐ-kə-o-nə-ɟɐ-sɐ-ʁⁿduʔ tɐlŋaʔ=nəʔ
CONT:LTR-NMLZ:SBJ-INV-SPON-REFL-CAUS-beat child=DET
‘the child who is getting himself beaten’

➢ Three derivational prefixes (reflexive, spontaneous and causative) and

three inflectional prefixes
 The areal typology of Sinitic

 Ex.: Stem alternations constrained by tense and person in Khaling for the
verb ‘to bring’ (Kiranti; Jacques et al. 2012: 1104; glosses adapted)

STEM TENSE PERSON STEM TENSE PERSON

1 non-past 1S G >3 ɦod-u 6 non-past 3P L >3 ɦɵ̂:t-nu

2 non-past 1D U .IN C L >3 ɦɵts-i 7 past 1S G >3 ɦɵ̂:-tʌ

3 non-past 1P L .IN C L >3 ɦoɔç-ki 8 past 1D U .IN C L >3 ɦɵs-ti

4 non-past 2P L >3 ʔi-ɦoɔ̂n-ni 9 past 3S G >3 ɦɵ̂:-tɛ

5 non-past 3S G >3 ɦɵ:d-u 10 non-past 3S G >1S G ʔi-ɦoɔ̂j

The areal typology of Sinitic

 Notable exception: Karenic languages, where we find strong affinities

with the MSEA language type, including lexical tone, dominantly
monosyllabic morphemes, little or no inflection, verb medial order (vs.
verb-final in most Tibeto-Burman languages), etc. (Solnit 1997)
 In fact, Karenic developed in contact with neighbouring Tai and Mon-
Khmer languages (Norman 2003)
 Bickel & Nichols (2013): complex verb structure is an archaic feature of
Sino-Tibetan, as inferred by from the geographical distribution in the
family; under intense language contact (see above), verbal morphology
underwent simplification in many branches of Sino-Tibetan (but cf.
LaPolla 2017)
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Interestingly, languages displaying transparent, regular agglutinating

(or isolating) morphology are generally those which were used as
lingua francas (Sinitic, Tibetic, Burmese, Boro-Garo), or also
languages which, despite having developed in a more isolated
environment, do show the effects of intense contact and creolization
(Tani).
 In contrast, conservative Sino-Tibetan languages, which preserve
complex verb paradigms, are often spoken in isolated mountain areas:
Rgyalrongic in the mountains of Sichuan, and Kiranti and Kham-Magar
languages in the mountain valleys of Nepal (DeLancey, 2015).
 Similarly, languages with innovative complex verb paradigms, with only
few traces of the ancient system, are also often found in isolated
areas: for instance, the Kuki-Chin languages spoken in remote areas
of Myanmar and Northeast India.
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Profile of modern Sinitic languages heavily shaped by contact

 Starting from the epoch of Qin imperial unification (221 - 207 BCE),
there have been repeated waves of migrations of Chinese-speaking
people to Southern China, which created a situation of intense contact
between Sinitic languages and Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai and
Austroasiatic languages, i.e. the languages spoken by ethnic groups
established in (what is now) Southern China (traditionally referred to in
Chinese as the 百越 Bǎi Yuè; see Yue 1991).
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Profile of modern Sinitic languages heavily shaped by contact

 On the other hand, Northern China, was (and still is) inhabited also by
speakers of Mongolic, Turkic and Tungusic languages (including
Manchu as the ethnic language of the Qing emperors; see LaPolla
2001; Cao and Yu 2015; Zu 2013). These languages, traditionally
referred to as ‘Altaic’, have a very different typological profile from
MSEA languages: they are typically verb-final, place modifiers before
the modified element, and they mostly make use of agglutinative
morphology. Thus, unsurprinsgly, while Southern Sinitic languages
appear as very close to the MSEA type, Northern Sinitic possesses
more North Asian (Altaic) features (Comrie 2008: 1).
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Hashimoto (1976; 1986): ‘Altaicization’ of Northern Sinitic, and

‘Taiization’ of Southern Chinese (Tai languages being perhaps the best
representative of the MSEA type; Comrie 2007: 44-45).

North South
Stress-based and fewer tones More tones
Higher proportion of polysyllabic words Higher proportion of monosyllabic words
Simpler syllable structure More complex syllable structure
Smaller inventory of classifiers Larger inventory of classifiers
Preponderance of modifier-modified More instantiations of modified-modifier
IO-DO word order for ditransitives DO-IO word order for ditransitives
Preverbal adverbs Possibility of postverbal or clause-final adverbs
Marker-standard-adjective order in the Adjective-marker-standard order in the
comparative construction comparative construction
Passive markers based on causative speech act Passive markers based on the verb ‘give’
verbs
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Sinitic languages as part of the Mainland East- and Southeast Asian area
(Matisoff 2001; Enfield 2005; Goddard 2005; Ansaldo 2010)

a. tendency towards monosyllabism (sesquisillabism for some

languages)
b. isolating / analytic morphology
c. lack of agreement for number, gender, case, etc.
d. lack of obligatory arguments (zero anaphora)
e. topic-prominent syntax
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Radical pro-drop:

(Li & Thompson 1981: 668)

The areal typology of Sinitic

 Sinitic languages as part of the Mainland East- and Southeast Asian area
(Matisoff 2001; Enfield 2005; Goddard 2005; Ansaldo 2010)

f. use of lexical morphemes with grammatical functions

g. use of serial verb constructions
h. verb-medial, head-modifier order, use of prepositions
i. use of lexical (and grammatical) tone
j. use of (modal) sentence-final particles
The areal typology of Sinitic

 Sinitic languages as part of the Mainland East- and Southeast Asian area
(Matisoff 2001; Enfield 2005; Goddard 2005; Ansaldo 2010)

k. the use of classifiers

l. prominence of aspect over tense
m. rich vowel inventories
The areal typology of Sinitic

 isolating / analytic morphology; lack of agreement for number, gender,

case, etc.; lack of obligatory arguments (zero anaphora); topic-prominent
syntax (word order not necessarily shaped by subjecthood and/or
agentivity; see Morbiato 2018)

➢ ‘Indeterminatedness’ of MSEA languages (Bisang 2004; Enfield

2005)
The areal typology of Sinitic

“In no MSEA language are clausal heads or dependents morphologically

marked for argument structure relations − i.e., there is neither case-marking
nor agreement. Although it is often presumed that in isolating languages the
functions of such morphological marking are performed by constituent order,
there is considerable within-language constituent order variability. The typical
MSEA language combines widespread noun phrase ellipsis (of definite
arguments) with noun phrase movement (into clause-external positions like
topic), resulting in great indeterminacy of surface sequences” (Enfield
2005:188)
“Normal utterances are often impossible to interpret properly outside the
contexts in which they actually occur” (Enfield 2001:259)
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
他/她来
(Tā) lái
s/he come
‘S/he comes / has come / is coming / will come / etc.’ > context-dependent TAM

他/她买报
Tā mǎi bào
s/he buy newspaper
‘S/he buys/bought a newspaper /newspapers/the newspaper/the newspapers...’

“the (...) two informationally rather indetermined utterances in Chinese are perfectly
acceptable in a context in which no particular information beyond the concept denoted
by the verb (...) or the noun (...) is needed” (Bisang 2004: 111-112)
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
Compare Riau Indonesian:

ayam makan

‘the chicken is eating’; ‘someone is eating the chicken’; ‘someone is eating

for the chicken’; ‘someone is eating with the chicken’; ‘the chicken
who/which is eating’; ‘the place where the chicken is eating’; ‘when the
chicken is eating’, etc.

(Gil 2007:74)
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages

沒有人可以问问题
méi-yǒu rén kěyǐ wèn wèntí
NEG-exist person can ask question
a. ‘(There is) No one (who) can ask questions.’
b. ‘There is no one to ask questions of.’

(LaPolla & Poa 2006:276)

Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
她在图书馆
tā zài túshūguǎn Weak correlation
3S G .F be.at library ‘she is at the library’ between lexicon and
morphosyntax (詞類活
用 cílèi huóyòng); the
他在医院死了
same lexeme may
tā zài yīyuàn sǐ-le
occur in different
3S G .M at hospital die-P F V ‘he died at the hospital’
morphosyntactic
environments
他在穿皮鞋
tā zài chuān píxié
3S G .M P R O G put.on leather-shoe ‘he is putting on leather shoes’

Each of the different ‘identities’ of 在 zài is recoverable through pragmatic

inference (no unidirectional cline), and there are no differences in shape (no
coevolution of form and meaning; exx. adapted from Bisang 2004:117 )
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Indeterminatedness entails that grammatical morphemes are rarely (if
ever) obligatory

(Xiao & McEnery 2004:128; my glosses)

→ For a fully grammaticalised category, the absence of a marker is

meaningful; here the lack of −了 −le does not entail imperfective aspect
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
Radical pro-drop + lack of obligatory marking of grammatical
categories (Bisang 2014: 29):
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages

Overt complexity vs. hidden complexity (Bisang 2014, 2015):

If the grammar of a language allows the omission of grammatical

categories, you can produce surface structures which require more
inferential effort > hidden complexity motivated by economy (vs.
iconicity > overt complexity)

➢ Hidden complexity means that the frequency of grammatical markers is

generally lower, inhibiting the rise of paradigms (more on this below)
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Grammaticalization without coevolution of form and meaning (contra
Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1991)

➢ “In a language in which almost every grammatical category almost

always can be inferred from the context, i.e., in a language where there
is almost no obligatory grammatical category, even a highly
grammaticalized linguistic item shows a higher degree of informative
value than in a language showing a lower degree of
indeterminateness. This higher degree of informative value is reflected
by the fundamental phonological stability of a linguistic sign even in a
context of high grammaticalization.” (Bisang 1996:535)
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Grammaticalization, paradigms and frequency of occurrence

➢ Morphological paradigms typically do not emerge: a paradigm is

based on a grammatical category as, say, tense or number, with values
or subcategories; grammaticalised signs which have a “broad
functional spectrum” and, on the other hand, fail to cover the whole
range of meanings/functions of a given category, as is typical for the
languages at issue, are not valid candidates for building a paradigm
(Bisang 2008; 2014)
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Es.: Mandarin perfective marker -了 –le (Lin 2006):

(a) 我买一本书
wǒ mǎi yī běn shū
1SG buy one CLF bought > default present
‘I am buying a book’

(b) 我买了一本书
wǒ mǎi-le yī běn shū
1SG buy-PFV one CLF bought > default past
‘I bought a book’
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Es.: Mandarin perfective marker -了 –le (Lin 2006):

等你拿到了博士学位，我就买新车给你
děng nǐ nádào-le bóshì xuéwèi, wǒ jiù mǎi xīn chē gěi nǐ
wait you obtain-P F V PhD degree I then buy new car to you
‘after you have got your doctor degree, I will buy a new car for you’
(Lin 2006: 19)

*我明天看了电影
*wǒ míngtiān kàn-le diànyǐng
I tomorrow watch-P F V film
‘I will watch a film tomorrow’ (Xiao & McEnery 2004: 116)
了 –le having “a component of relative past as part of its meaning” (Lin
2006: 19, fn. 18; See also Wu 2004)
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Grammaticalization, paradigms and frequency of occurrence
➢ Moreover, a paradigm is expected to emerge when the markers of a given
grammatical category are frequently used; this is connected with semantic
generality, which allows them to occur in a broader range of contexts,
even when they are semantically redundant (Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca,
1994). In this context, a construction may become obligatory and, thus,
even more frequent; in the languages of East and Southeast Asia there
seems to be no obligatory expression of grammatical categories, arguably
(also) because of their ‘fuzzy’ semantics, and even grams with highly
generalised meanings are not as frequent as, say, tense markers in
English, because they are optional (Bisang 2008).

➢ “If a marker is semantically general enough to be coextensive with a basic

grammatical entity like noun or verb, its occurrence may become
obligatory with that entity. As a consequence, it becomes even more
frequent” (Bisang 2008: 33)
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Grammaticalization, paradigms and frequency of occurrence

➢ Note that Old Chinese (reconstructed) morphology was in

essence derivational, and some forms had blurry meanings
(e.g. *s- as causative, nouns> verbs, verbs>nouns,
exodirectional; Sagart 1999) > no 1:1 correspondence between
meaning and form (Bisang 2014)

➢ True obligatory grammatical categories have always been

virtually/mostly absent from Chinese, throughout its history
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Grammaticalization, paradigms and frequency of occurrence
➢ What about the relationship between frequency, generality and
phonological reduction/fusion? Phonological reduction and fusion,
as well as “weakening of semantic force”, are claimed to be
conditioned by high frequency of use (Bybee, 2003, p. 604); more
frequent items tend to be shorter than less used ones, and
grammatical items are phonetically reduced with respect to lexical
items.
➢ When a word and a morpheme very often occur together they “come to
be stored and processed in one chunk”; high frequency can also favour
fusion between lexical items and grams.
➢ An increase in the token frequency of a grammaticalised construction,
also, enhances its autonomy as an independent construction (Bybee
2006).
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 Grammaticalization, paradigms and frequency of occurrence
➢ The lack of phonological reduction and fusion for grammaticalised
signs in the languages of East and mainland Southeast Asia could be
motivated also by their comparatively lower frequency than analogous
items in inflectional languages, in which there are obligatory grammatical
categories with fully developed morphological paradigms
➢ Moreover, Bisang (2008, following Ansaldo and Lim 2004), suggests that
grammaticalisation in Sinitic can actually be expressed by “phonetic
erosion”, but only in terms of duration and vowel quality, rather than by
“morphological reduction” (Bisang, 2008, pp. 16-17); this is due to the
discreteness of syllable boundaries (i.e. strong tendency to avoid
subsyllabic morphemes) and to certain “phonotactic constraints”
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
➢ Note that Ansaldo and Lim’s work is based on data from Cantonese
and Hokkien, which have three tonal registers (H, M and L): “[a] low
tone is just as marked (or unmarked) as a higher one and does not
constitute an indication of erosion” (Ansaldo & Lim 2004: 347)

➢ Hence, a reduction in pitch height is anyway meaningful, as, for

instance, a mid level tone may be misinterpreted as a low tone, rather
than as a sign of erosion > tonal contrast required to maintain semantic
constrast
Grammaticalization in Chinese and
Mainland Southeast Asian Languages
 However, Standard Mandarin (and many Northern Chinese dialects)
have only one tonal register: the effect of pitch reduction on
distinctiveness is weaker in languages with one register, and there are
neutral tone syllables (weakly stressed; Norman 1988); toneless
grammatical markers are thus possible, and “[w]ith the option of
tonelessness also comes the option of morphological erosion” (Bisang
2014: 52)

 Some grammatical morphemes, as SM progressive −著 −zhe (< zháo

‘touch’) and perfective −了−le (< liǎo ‘finish’) are actually toneless and
show a certain degree of reduction even at the segmental level, but
this is considered an exception (Bisang 2014; more on this
tomorrow)