Lin M C & Yan J Z (1988). ‘The characteristic features of the final reduction in the neutral-tone syllable of BeijingMandarin.’ In

Phonetic Laboratory Annual Report of Phonetic Research.

Beijing: Phonetic Laboratory, Insti-tute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.37–51.Lin T & Shen J (1995). ‘Beijinghua er hua yun de yuyinfenqi’ [Variations in the [er]-suffixed rimes in the Beijingdialect].

Zhongguo Yuwen 1995,

170–179.Lin T & Wang L J (eds.) (1985).

Beijing yuyin shiyanlu.

[Working papers in experimental phonetics]. Beijing:Beijing University Press.Lin Y H (1989). ‘Autosegmental treatment of segmentalprocesses in Chinese phonology.’ Ph.D. diss., Universityof Texas, Austin.Shen J (1985). ‘Beijinghua shengdiao de yinyu he yudiao’[Pitch range of tone and intonation in Beijing dialect]. InLin T & Wang L J (eds.) 73–130.Shen J (1994). ‘Beijinghua shangsheng liandu de diaoxingzuhe he jiezou xingshi’ [Tonal patterns and rhythmicstructure in successive third tones in the Beijing dialect].

Zhongguo Yuwen 1994,

274–281.Shih C L (1986). ‘The prosodic domain of tone sandhi inChinese.’Ph.D.diss.,UniversityofCalifornia,SanDiego.Wang J & Wang L J (1993). ‘Putonghua duo yinjie ci yinjieshi chang fenbu moshi’ [The types of relative lengths of syllables in polysyllabic words in Putonghua].

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Tone.

Cambridge,UK:CambridgeUniversityPress.

Chinese as an Isolating Language

J L Packard

, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

If we use the term ‘isolating’ in what is perhaps itssimplest and most often used sense – referring towhether the words of a language are mostly mono-morphemic (

see

Classification of Languages

) – thenChinese can be considered only a moderately isolat-ing language, because Chinese has at least as manymultimorphemic as it has monomorphemic words.The term isolating, however, has also been used torefer to whether the morphemes of a language areclearly identifiable, defined by the following proper-ties: (1) whether morpheme boundaries in the lan-guage are sharply defined, (2) whether there is onlyasingledistinctmorphemicidentityrepresentedwith-in a defined morpheme boundary space (i.e., the ex-tent to which there is no overlapping exponence; (

see

Classification of Languages

), and (3) whether mor-phemes in the language have a single, invariant pho-nological form. If we define an isolating languagebased on an identifiable morphemes criteria, thenChinese scores relatively high on the ‘isolating lan-guage’ scale. It can be profitably studied using bothdefinitions of the term.

Isolating Defined as HavingMonomorphemic Words

The definition of isolating language as monomorphe-mic relies on whether words in a language appearwithout the obligatory affixation of grammaticalmorphemic information. This property was intendedto contrast with languages such as Russian and Latinin which word roots are generally bound contentforms that requireaffixation of grammaticalmorphe-mic information (indicating such properties as case,number, or gender) when they occur in context. Forexample the Russian root for ‘book’ (

knig

-) must beaugmented with an inflectional ending that reflectscase or number (

knig-u

book-ACC.SING;

knig-i

book-NOM.PL), and cannot appear as a bare stemin isolation.Languages like Chinese whose words occurwithout such obligatory grammatical marking areconsidered isolating because the words in such lan-guages may appear inbareform without the necessityof adding morphemic information. The absence of obligatory affixation means that words in such lan-guages will tend to contain fewer morphemes onaverage, giving rise to the monomorphemic worddefinition of isolating language.

Chinese as an Isolating Language

355

As it turns out, many (if not most) Chinese wordsare in fact dimorphemic, consisting of either (1) twofree content morphemes (compound word), (2) onefree and one bound content morpheme or two boundcontent morphemes (bound root word), (3) a free orbound content morpheme plus a word-forming affix(derived word), or (4) a free content morpheme plusan inflectional affix (grammatical word; see Packard,2000 for further details). However, most dimorph-emic Chinese words are either compound words orbound root words, and so the multimorphemic statusof Chinese words is generally not due to the presenceof affixation. Moreover,when Chinese words do con-tainaffixes,they areneverobligatoryinthesensethatthey are required in the default case, as seen in theRussian example above.Chinese affixes are, nonetheless, sometimes obliga-tory in an alternative sense: if a property in questionis selected to be expressed by the speaker, then the useof the affix concomitant with that property is a re-quired element. Some common examples of thisobligatory marking of an optionally selected propertyin Chinese are the use of classifiers with nouns, themarking of plural numbers on human pronouns, andthe use of aspect marking on verbs.Classifiers are word-forming morphemes that arerequired when nouns are modified by a numberand/or a determiner. For example, the noun

shu

‘

book

’

generally occurs in context in bare form withno grammatical marking whatsoever. But when

shu

ismodified by a number such as

san

‘

three

’

or a deter-miner such as

‘

that,

’

the classifier

ben

‘

volume

’

must occur between the modifying element and thenoun, yielding

san-ben shu

and

na-ben shu

for

‘

threebooks

’

and

‘

that book

’

respectively.In the case of human pronouns, the personal pro-nouns

‘

I/me,

’

‘

you,

’

and

‘

he, she

’

are obliga-torily marked with the plural suffix -

men

when thereferent is plural in number, to yield

women

‘

we, us,

’

nimen

‘

you (pl),

’

and

tamen

‘

they, them.

’

Verbs in Chinese may occur with inflectional suf-fixes that express various forms of grammatical as-pect, that is, that refer to the activity profile of theevent represented by the verb. For example, the ver-bal aspect marker -

(note that this is the -

thataffixes to and has scope over the verb, and not the

that occurs in sentence-final position and has scopeover the sentence) indicates that the event asso-ciated with the verb has been completed, the verbalaspect marker-

guo

indicates that the event associatedwith the verb has occurred at least once, and theverbal aspect marker -

zhe

indicates that the actionrepresented by the verb is ongoing or continuous.In Chinese, the obligatory marking of a selectedproperty as seen in classifiers, human pluralpronouns, and verbal aspect contrasts with cases inwhich the marking of a selected property is optional,as with plural marking on regular human nouns.When a human noun is transparently plural in num-ber, the addition of the suffix

–

men,

which wouldexplicitly represent a plural number, is optional. Forexample, in both of the following examples theChinese nounthattranslates intoEnglish as

‘

teachers

’

refers unambiguously to a set that contains multiplemembers.

(1) laoshi dou you shuteacher all have book

‘

the teachers all have books

’

(2) laoshimen dou you shuteacher-PL all have book

‘

the teachers all have books

’

Both examples refer to

‘

teachers

’

as a plural conceptbut only the second overtly marks the plural numberwith the suffix -

men

. The two examples are identicalinmeaning,but the second explicitly marks the pluralwhile the first does not.If Chinese is examined as an isolating languagebased on its use of monomorphemic words, it isworthwhile to consider in concrete terms where Chi-nese should be located on the monomorphemic wordscale. The contemporary Chinese novel

Shui Ru DaDi

by Wen Fan (2004; Beijing: People

’

s LiteraturePublishing House) provides a typical sampling. If weexamine the first 100 words in the third paragraphon page 16, we find that 51 (51%) of the words aremonomorphemic (if by token; 35 words or 47.2% if by type), 45 (45%) of the words are dimorphemic(if by token; 35 words or 47.2% if by type), and 4words (4%ifbytoken,5.4% if bytype) containmorethan two morphemes. If counted by type, 47.3%of the words are monomorphemic, and 52.7% aremultimorphemic.In addition, the average number of morphemesper word token for that hundred-word sample is1.54. This figure may be compared with the 1.06morphemes-per-word cited for Vietnamese (perhapsthe most purely isolating language using this crite-rion), 1.68 for modern English, and 3.72 for Eskimo(

see

Classification of Languages

). In sum, if the con-cept ofmonomorphemicwords isused asthe definingcriterion, Chinese must be considered only moderate-ly isolating.

Isolating Defined as Having ClearlyIdentifiable Morphemes

To determine where Chinese belongs on the isolatinglanguage scale using the

‘

identifiable morpheme

’

criterion, the first property to consider is sharply

356

Chinese as an Isolating Language

defined morpheme boundaries. In Chinese, mor-pheme boundaries are nothing if not clearly defined.There is generally no question where one morphemeends and another one begins in any Chinese utter-ance. Even in cases of affixation in which the phono-logical form of the stem is affected, it is quite clearwhich part of the affixed word belongs to the stemand which part belongs to the affix.Toillustrate,considerthefollowingexamplesof-

(phonetically [

r]) diminution suffixation (data fromCheng, 1973; in IPA, tones not marked). The -

suffix often makes only a negligible semantic contri-bution to the derived word, but it is the affixationoperation that has the greatest phonological effect in(Mandarin) Chinese.The -

suffix attaches to words with varyingdegrees of phonological effect on the stem and onthe affix itself. In examples (1)

–

(3) of

Table 1

, the-

suffixisappendedtothestemwiththe[

]vowelof the suffix dropped in favor of stem vocalic elements,and with no effect on the phonological form of thestem. In (4), the [

] vowel of the suffix is dropped andthe stem final velar nasal [

] is lost, but its nasality isretained in the form of nasalization on the stem nu-clear vowel, that is, [

]. In (5), the [

] vowel of thesuffix is dropped and the stem final apical nasal [n] islost, but its nasality is not retained as in (4). In (6), wesee a stronger contribution from the suffix, since itretains its [

] vowel. In (7), the suffix is appendedin unaltered form, and the stem final [n] is displaced.In (8)

–

(10), the suffix is appended in unaltered form,replacing various parts of the stem final, including itscomplete replacement in (9) and (10).The examples in

Table 1

demonstrate that eventhough suffixation of -

results in a good deal of phonological variability on both stem and affix, inall cases the resulting derived words contain phono-logical strings that can be unambiguously attributedto either the stem or the affix, and the phonologicalidentitiesof the participating morphemesremain clear.Thus, the sharply defined morpheme boundary aspectof the identifiable morpheme criterion for isolatinglanguagemakesChineseappear quite isolating indeed.The second criterion for identifiable morphemes istheexistenceofoverlappingexponence.

‘

Overlappingexponence

’

refers to the occurrence of more than onegrammaticalpropertywithinasingleaffix.Forexam-ple, in the case of the -

ending on the Latin word

lupus

‘

wolf

’

, where the -

encodes both accusativecaseandsingularnumber,thereisnowaytoconferanindependent phonological identity upon a portion of the -

suffix that encodes the accusative and a partthat encodes the singular. In Chinese, there are noaffixes that do such double duty by systematicallyencoding more than one grammatical meaning in asingle affix. Therefore, Chinese is clearly an isolatinglanguage in view of this property.The third necessary property of identifiable mor-phemes is invariance of phonological form. Chinesemorphemes do commonly change from their citationphonological forms when they appear in context.Such phonological variation, however, is virtuallyalways completely determined by phonological envi-ronment. This is in contrast with languages such asRussian and Latin, where allomorphic variation ingeneral is grammatically conditioned, and generallyoccurs independent of phonological context. In Chi-nese, the shift from citation form usually involvestone sandhi, a phonologically conditioned change inlexical tone. Two tone sandhi rules from Mandarin,the L tone sandhi rule and the MH tone sandhi rule,provide an illustration (from Chen, 2000: 20, 27).Mandarin Chinese has four lexical tones: a high(H) tone, a mid-rising (MH) tone, a low (L) tone,and a high-falling (HL) tone. The L tone sandhi rulechanges an L into an MH when the L precedes (i.e.,occurs to the left of) another L. The MH tone sandhirulechangesanonfinalMHintoanHwhenitfollows(i.e., occurs to the right of) by an H or an MH. In (3),the citation tones for

‘

to bury a horse

’