Table Of ContentGuangshun Cao, Hsiao-jung Yu (Eds.)
Language Contact and Change in Chinese
Trends in Chinese Linguistics
Editors
Alain Peyraube
Guangshun Cao
Thekla Wiebusch
Volume 1
Language Contact
and Change
in Chinese
Edited by
Guangshun Cao, Hsiao-jung Yu
ISBN 978-3-11-061006-2
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061298-1
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-061024-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934272
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Foreword
From the 14th–13th century BCE until the present, Chinese has had more than five
thousand years of written records. Historical documents indicate that China has
been in contact with languages from other language families for over two thou-
sand years. The earliest contact between Chinese and another language can be
dated back to the first century BCE, when the Xiongnu people (the Huns) founded
their empire on the grasslands of northern China. Throughout Chinese history,
the Chinese have interacted with many other ethnic groups, and the Chinese lan-
guage has been in contact with various languages belonging to other families. In
this sense, the history of China may be seen as a history of the Chinese language
in constant contact with other languages.
From the 1980s on, a tremendous amount of research has been devoted to
grammatical change in the Chinese language. Researchers have conducted syn-
chronic studies on the linguistic structures of different dynastic periods, as well
as diachronic studies on the development of those structures. These studies have
enhanced our understanding of the process, mechanism and development of
Chinese syntactic change. In the beginning of the 21st century, some researchers
began to pay attention to the external mechanism at work in Chinese language
development – language contact in the history of the Chinese language.
Historically there are three major episodes of large scale language contact in
China. The earliest one for which there are extant written documents dates from
the Late Han Dynasty (circa 200 CE) to the Tang Dynasty (618–907), and involves
the case of Buddhist texts translated into Chinese from Sanskrit (Pali/Prakrits).
The second episode involves contact between Chinese speakers and those of
various branches of Altaic languages including Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongolian,
which took place from the Song Dynasty (960–1279) to the Yuan Dynasty (1279–
1368). The third episode is the contact between Chinese and Manchu speakers
during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911).
When we look at the regions in which Chinese people reside or neighbor with
minority groups in southwestern and/or northwestern China during the Modern
Period, we can see that there has been continuous language contact between the
Chinese and non-Chinese. There are features found in these languages compara-
ble to certain phenomena observed in historical documents and texts.
The abundance of extant Chinese written materials has allowed linguists to
trace and study the emergence and development of these new contact-induced
features, i.e., atypical linguistic elements in the Chinese language. Thus, the use
of written documents to study the evolution of the new conduct-induced features
is highly significant to understanding the impact/influence of language contact
in the history of Chinese syntax.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110612981-201
VI Foreword
There are two axes by which we may observe the linguistic development of
these contact-induced features in Chinese: a “horizontal”, differential axis and
“vertical”, evolutionary axis. The former adopts a synchronic perspective which
focuses on the atypical linguistic features that emerged in each dynastic period
and the changes they triggered for the Chinese language of that particular period;
the latter employs a diachronic perspective which analyses the impact of these
changes on the development of the Chinese language. The key considerations
in studying language contact and change in the history of the Chinese language
include the emergence of atypical linguistic features, and the location and
approximate time period or dynastic period in which these features appeared and
were used. More importantly, these considerations include the process and mech-
anisms involved in the development of these atypical features, and ultimately,
their impact on the development of the Chinese language.
The study of language contact and change in the history of the Chinese lan-
guage has attracted more and more Chinese linguists’ and scholars’ attention.
The articles collected in this volume were originally published as journal arti-
cles by Shangwu Publishing House. They comprise studies of the three major
language contact episodes in China, namely the language in translated Chinese
Buddhist sutras and texts of the Medieval period, the ‘Yuan Dynasty colloquial
language’ (Yuan baihua), and the Chinese language under the Manchus’ control
during the Qing Dynasty. One article concerns the language contact study of lin-
guistic features in certain Sinitic languages (or “Chinese dialects”) in the Modern
Period. Some articles give special attention to a given period and discuss the lin-
guistic changes triggered by language contact during that period, while others
analyze the nature and features of the contacts of different periods and consider
their impact on the historical development of the Chinese language. It is our hope
that these articles may provide a general picture of the kinds of research done by
Chinese linguists in the study of contact and change in the history of the Chinese
language.
Guangshun Cao and Hsiao-jung Yu
25-03-2017
Contents
Foreword V
List of Abbreviations IX
Hsiao-jung Yu (遇笑容)
Theory and fact – A study of the translated Buddhist scriptures of the
Medieval Period from the perspective of language contact 1
Guanming Zhu (朱冠明)
On the origin of the Chinese reflexive ziji from the perspective of the
Medieval Chinese Buddhist scriptures 15
Chirui Hu (胡敕瑞)
The origin and development of negative exclusive particles in the
Chinese language 41
Changcai Zhao (赵长才)
The postpositions suo 所 and bian 边 in translated Chinese Buddhist
scriptures of the Medieval Period 75
Lansheng Jiang (江蓝生)
Variant reduplication and four-character state adjectives in
Yuan Zaju 96
Yonglong Yang (杨永龙)
The correlation between the Chinese purpose construction
“VP + qu (去, ‘go’)” and SOV languages 125
Shengli Zu (祖生利)
On the Han’er Yanyu of the Yuan Dynasty 149
Guangshun Cao (曹广顺) and Dandan Chen (陈丹丹)
A study of the special syntactic features in Yuan baihua 168
Dandan Chen (陈丹丹)
On the special syntactic features in the vernacular imperial edicts of the
early Ming Dynasty (1368–1424) 191
VIII Contents
Yunbing Li (李云兵)
The influence of language contact on word order of some minority languages
in Southern China 205
Guangshun Cao (曹广顺) and Hsiao-jung Yu (遇笑容)
Second language acquisition and contact-induced language change in the
history of the Chinese language 237
Postscript 254
Index 255
List of Abbreviations
1, 2, 3 1st, 2nd, 3rd person pronoun LOC locative case
1PL 1st personal pronoun plural m marker
2PL 2nd personal pronoun plural M masculine
3PL 3rd personal pronoun plural Madv manner adverb
1SG 1st personal pronoun singular MMW mimetic word
2SG 2nd personal pronoun singular MW measure word
3SG 3rd personal pronoun singular NEG negative
ABL ablative NMZ nominalizer/nominalization
ACC accusative NOM nominative case
ADJ adjective OBJ object/objective case
ADV adverb OW onomatopoetic word
AFF affirmative PART particle
AUX auxiliary PASS passive voice
CAUS causative PERF perfect
CL classifier POST postposition/postpositional case
CONJ conjunction PREP preposition/prepositional phrase
COP copular PRES present tense
Dadv degree adverb PRO expletive pronoun
DAT dative PROG progressive
DECL declarative mood Q question marker
DEM demonstrative QUOT quotative (quotative case or
EXPER experiential quotative mood)
FUT future tense REL relative(izer)
GEN genitive SKT Sanskrit
IMPERF imperfect St standard
INSTR instrumental case TOP topic
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110612981-202
