Typological Characteristics (Continued)

2.3 Monosyllabicity: morphemes or words? Although classical Chinese appears to have been a monosyllabic language, modern Mandarin is no longer monosyllabic. Indeed, Mandarin has a very large number of polysyllabic words. (Li & Thompson 1981: 14; emphasis added) (4) xuxio qizi yuq pto tshgun ksh jiodu fmng linh school eggplant paint grape library but proofread invent join

Chinese is also often referred to as a MONOSYLLABIC language, which means that almost all words contain only one syllable (Lin 2007: 5). Many of the languages of East Asia, including Chinese, are monosyllabic. This is generally taken to mean that in these languages morphemes are by and large represented by single syllables. Actually there is probably no language in which all morphemes are monosyllables; but in the type of language that we are referring to here, the vast majority of morphemes do in fact consist of single syllables. This is the case with Chinese at all stages of its development. In Modern Chinese there are many polysyllabic words, but these almost always consist of strings of monosyllabic morphemes: a word like din-hu telephone is made up of two morphemes meaning electric-speech respectively: genuinely polysyllabic morpheme like zhzhu spider, dla hang down, gda lump are decidedly in the minority. (Norman 1988: 8-9; emphasis added) Chinese is not a monosyllabic language if monosyllabicity refers to words; however, Chinese is indeed monosyllabic if monosyllabicity refers to morphemes. As for English, it is not monosyllabic whether on the word level or on the morpheme level.

2.4 Topic prominence vs. subject prominence One of the most striking features of Mandarin sentence structure, and one that sets Mandarin apart from many other languages, is that in addition to the grammatical relations of subject and direct object, the description of Mandarin must also 1

include the element topic. Because of the importance of topic in the grammar of Mandarin, it can be termed a topic-prominent language. (Li & Thompson 1981: 15) Basically, the topic of a sentence is what the sentence is about. It always comes first in the sentence, and it always refers to something about which the speaker assumes the person listening to the utterance has some knowledge (Li & Thompson 1981: 15) Furthermore, a topic can always optionally be followed by a pause in speech, which serves to set the topic, that which is being talked about, apart from the rest of the sentence. What distinguishes topic from subject is that the subject must always have a direct semantic relationship with the verb as the one that performs the action or exists in the state named by the verb, but the topic need not. (5) Zhngsn w yjng jin-guo Zhangsan I already see-EXP Zhangsan, Ive already seen (him). zhi-k sh yzi hn d. this-cl tree leaf very big This tree, (its) leaves are very big. le.
CRS

(6)

Nearly all English sentences must have a subject, and the subject is easy to identify in an English sentence, since it typically occurs right before the verb and the verb agrees with it in number (Li & Thompson 1981: 15-16) In Mandarin, on the other hand, the concept of subject seems to be less significant, while the concept of topic appears to be quite crucial in explaining the structure of ordinary sentences in the language. The subject is not marked by position, by agreement, or by any case marker, and in fact, in ordinary conversation, the subject may be missing altogether (7) ho lng a very cold RF (Its) very cold.

Chinese is a topic-prominent language and English is subject-prominent language.

2.5 Word order Greenberg 1966: three major groups of world languages, namely VSO, SVO, and SOV [Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of language, 2nd edn., 73-113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.] Dryer 2008: http://wals.info/feature/81 Greenbergs word-order correlations: The order of the verb and the direct object tends to correlate with the order of modified element and modifying element in the following way: (a) If the direct object follows the verb then modifiers of the nouns tend to follow the noun and modifiers of the verb tend to follow the verb. And conversely: (b) If the object precedes the verb then modifiers of the noun tend to precede the noun and modifiers of the verb tend to precede the verb. That is, the order of all types of modifiers in relation to their heads (the words they modify) follows the same order as that of the verb and its direct object. (Li & Thompson 1981: 17) (8) John-wa Tokyo-de Mary-ni at-ta. John-TOPIC Tokyo-in Mary-I.o. meet-PAST John met Mary in Tokyo.

Correlations (Li & Thompson 1981: 18) Features That Correlate with the Relative Position of Verb and Object VO Languages OV Languages Head Modifier Modifier/Head Verb/Adverb Adverb/Verb Noun/Adjective Adjective/Noun Noun/Relative Clause Relative Clause/Noun Noun/Possessive (of the box) Possessive/Noun Other Correlations Auxiliary/Verb (can, have) Preposition/Noun No sentence-final question particle

Verb/Auxiliary Noun/Postposition Sentence-final question particle

(A postposition in an OV language may be a case suffix , or it may signal the same kinds of semantic relationships as do prepositions in VO languages, namely, location, possession, direction, and the like.) Li & Thompson (1981: 19): Mandarin is not an easy language to classify in terms of word order, for three reasons.

o First, the notion of subject is not a structurally well-defined one in the grammar of Mandarin. the basic structure of sentences can be more insightfully described in terms of the topic-comment relation rather than in terms of the subject-predicate relation. o A second and closely related fact is that the order in which basic words and phrases occur is governed to a large extent by considerations of meaning [e.g. definiteness] rather than of grammatical functions. This means that sentences with verb at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end can be found in Mandarin. o Third, whether it is taken to be verb medial or verb final, Mandarin is inconsistent with respect to the features that correlate with VO or OV order according to Greenbergs typological scheme. For example, sample texts reveal a greater number of VO than OV sentences, yet modifiers must precede their heads, which is an OV feature. Mandarin can be seen to have some of the features of an SOV language and some of those of an SVO language, with more of the former than of the latter (Li & Thompson 1981: 23) SOV and SVO Features of Mandarin (Li & Thompson 1981: 24) SVO Language Features SOV Language Features VO sentences occur OV sentences occur prepositions exist Prepositional phrases precede the V, except for time and place phrases auxiliaries precede the V Postpositions exist complex sentences are almost always SVO Relative clauses precede the head noun Genitive phrases precede the head noun Aspect markers follow the V Certain adverbials precede the V there are VSO languages, SVO languages, SOV languages, and languages for which no basic word order can be established. Mandarin appears to be in this last category. (Li & Thompson 1981: 26) However, according to Sun & Givn (1985), Mandarin is a typical VO language in terms of text distribution of VO and OV order. OV appears at the level of about 10% in text, and this is true for both definite and indefinite objects. [Sun, Chao-Fen & Talmy Givn. 1985. On the so-called word order in Mandarin Chinese: A quantified text study and its implications. Language 61. 329-351.] Therefore, as far as the distribution of VO and OV order is concerned, Mandarin is undoubtedly a VO language. Because subject typically appears in the pre-verbal position in Chinese, Chinese can be classified as an SVO language,

as Dryer (2008) does in his classification (http://wals.info/feature/81). By the same standard, English is also an SVO language.

Phoneme, Tone and Intonation

1. Phoneme and phonological system: Phoneme: The smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning. IPA chart: http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/fullchart.html IPA chart with pronunciation: http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/ IPA consonants (Source: http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/fullchart.html)

Consonants in Mandarin (Source: Lin, Hua. 2001. A grammar of Mandarin Chinese, p.25. Muenchen: Lincom Europa.)

Consonants in American English (Source: Hayes, Bruce. 2009. Introductory phonology. Malden, MA; Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell.)

IPA vowels (Source: http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/fullchart.html)

Vowels in Mandarin (Source: Lin, Hua. 2001. A grammar of Mandarin Chinese, p.26. Muenchen: Lincom Europa.) front high mid low unround i round central back unround a round u o

Vowels in American English (Source: Hayes, Bruce. 2009. Introductory phonology. Malden, MA; Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell.)

Differences in the phonological system: English has dental fricatives (i.e. / /), but Mandarin does not. With respect to plosives/stops, being voiced or not is a phonemic feature in English, but in Mandarin the relevant feature is not voicing, but aspiration. With respect to front vowels, rounding is a relevant feature to Mandarin, but not to English. Phonological universals: The minimal vowel system includes /i a u/. All known languages are said to have these three vowels, or slight variations of them. All languages have stop consonants. If a language distinguishes stops at three places of articulation, then these places are labial, dental/alveolar (coronal), and velar.

2. Tone, intonation, and their functions 2.1 Tone Definition of tone: Other than consonants and vowels, TONE is the third kind of speech element used by languages like Mandarin to distinguish word meanings. That is, a change in the pitch of a word can change the meaning of a word. Therefore, tone can be defined as the pattern of pitch changes that affects the meaning of a word. Tone is a suprasegmental property. Generally, suprasegmental properties include length, tone, stress, and intonation that are not inherent properties of single consonants or vowels but can be associated with a span of more than one segment. A SEGMENT is a sound unit such as a consonant or a vowel. Phonetic properties of tone: The primary acoustic correlate of tone is fundamental frequency (F0), the main articulatory correlate of tone is the tension of the vocal folds, and the perception of tone depends on the perceived pitch level of F0. F0 refers to the vibration rate of the vocal folds, i.e. how fast the vocal folds vibrate. The faster the vocal folds vibrate, the higher the F0, and the higher the F0, the higher the pitch. In a single cycle of vibration, the vocal folds are first brought fairly close together, the air from the lungs then pushes through the narrow glottal opening, which induces a sucking effect to make the vocal folds completely closed to block the air escaping from the lungs, but the pressure built up from the lungs eventually breaks apart the vocal folds, releasing a puff of air. F0 is the number of such cycles occurring in a second. It is measured in Hertz (Hz) and one Hertz is one cycle per second. Unlike F0, which is an acoustic term that refers to the frequency of the vocal folds vibration of the speech signal itself, pitch is a perceptual term referring to a listeners perception of the F0 of the speech signal. A high tone has higher pitch and higher F0 and a low tone has lower pitch and lower F0. The pitch scale shows relative rather than absolute pitch values. Each speaker has his or her own normal pitch range. In ordinary speech, the intonation tends to take place within the lower part of the speakers pitch range, but in situations where strong feelings are to be expressed it is usual to make use of extra pitch height. In terms of articulation, the most important factor that determines the pitch of voice is the tension of the vocal folds. When the vocal folds are stretched or stiff, the pitch goes higher; when the vocal folds are slack, the pitch is lowered.

Tone bearing unit: Tone is not an inherent vowel feature. A TONE BEARING UNIT is the phonological entity that a tone is associated with. The tone bearing unit in Mandarin 9

has been variously proposed to be the syllable or the rime [typically a vowel (and its following consonant that belongs to the same syllable)]. Phonetically, tone in Mandarin is mostly manifested on the nuclear vowel of a syllable, but tonal features are not the same as vowel features such as high, low, front, and back that indicate vowel quality. Tone classification: Since tone is manifested by the pitch of the voice, each tone is classified according to: (i) how high or low the pitch is (PITCH LEVEL); and (ii) what the pattern of pitch change is (PITCH CONTOUR). In terms of PITCH LEVEL, tones can be classified into high, mid, and low, and in terms of PITCH CONTOUR (the shape of the pitch changes), we distinguish LEVEL TONES versus CONTOUR TONES. A level tone is one that has a relatively consistent pitch level whereas a contour tone is one that changes pitch level within a syllable. (1) Simple classification of tone a. Level tone: high, mid, low b. Contour tone: rising, falling, rising-falling, falling-rising Tones in Mandarin: Mandarin has four basic tones, which are also called citation tones, and they are phonemic, i.e. the change of tone can lead to a change of word meaning.

5 high pitch

4 mid-high

3 middle

2 mid-low

1 low pitch (2) Tonal contrasts in Mandarin (Lin 2007: 89) Tone number 1 2 3 4 Pitch pattern high level high rising low falling-rising high falling Pitch Value 55 35 214 51 10 Example [ma]55 m mother [ma]35 m hemp [ma]214 m horse [ma]51 m to scold

In terms of tonal classification, Mandarin has one level tone and three contour tones. In addition to the four basic tones, Mandarin also has a neutral tone. The neutral tone occurs in an unstressed short syllable in non-initial position in a word or phrase and it must be preceded by at least one syllable that has one of the four basic tones. The pitch level and contour of the neutral tone varies and depends on the preceding tone. Lin 2007: 99: for our purposes, we can think of the syllable with a neutral tone as being toneless (without any tone) and the phonetic pitch value of the toneless syllable results from the extension and influence of the preceding tone. Then the neutral tone is not a phonemic tone like the other four since it has no tone to begin with and it occurs only in highly restricted contexts. (emphasis added) However, the neutral tone can be phonemic: m (mother), m (hemp), m (horse), m (to scold), ma (question particle) gu (pot), gu (country), gu (to wrap, to bind), gu (to cross), guo (experiential aspect marker)

11