Response to Ho Dah-an William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart Abstract: Ho Dah-an’s 2016 review of our book Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction (2014) contains little discussion of the book’s main themes or proposals: he focuses instead on “errors” which, according to him, “reflect the outdated concepts of the authors and the insufficiency of their basic training.” In this response to Ho’s review, we consider his discussion of these “errors.” On two points (discussed below), he has actually found errors (a faulty interpretation of an entry in the Shuōwén jiězì and one incorrect citation), which we are glad to be able to correct. Neither materially affects our conclusions. The other

Probing the evolution history of Naish languages with reference to Tibetan, Burmese and rGyalrong: The open-syllable rhymes Zihe Li Abstract: This paper reconstructs the Proto-Naish open-syllable rhyme system. Data from 3 Naish languages—Lijiangba, Malimasa, and Yongning—are employed in the reconstruction. Rhyme correspondences revealed by comparing the three languages are interpreted by referring to conservative languages of the Sino-Tibetan family, in particular Tibetan, Burmese and rGyalrong. Other related languages, such as Tangut, and other Naic languages, such as Namuyi and Xumi, are taken as references. Five open-syllable rhymes, *-a, *-e, *-i, *-u, *-o, are reconstructed to Proto-Naish. Some general tendencies of the sound changes of the Naish languages are summarized, and their

Do new words propagate like memes? An internet usage-based two-stage model of the life cycle of neologisms Menghan Jiang, Kathleen Ahrens, Xiangying Shen, Sophia Yat Mei Lee and Chu-Ren Huang Abstract: Neologisms reflect new ideas or new concepts in our life and play an important role in cultural transmission and the vitality of human language. The explosion of neologisms, especially in the past two decades, can also be ascribed to the popularity and accessibility of digital content and social media. In this paper, we focus on the issue of how neologisms arise by looking at the trajectory of developments in terms of their usage over time, i.e., their life

A study of pattern path expressions in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of motion event typology Sai Ma Abstract: Given that pattern paths, one type of fictive motion, have been understudied so far, this paper examines pattern path expressions from the perspective of motion event typology. Through manually collecting Mandarin pattern path data from books and magazines, we first explored the semantic elements in pattern path expressions with a focus on the Figure and the Ground, and then investigated their lexicalization pattern by studying the grammatical slots encoding the Path, the semantic elements integrated in the verb, the expression of manner information, and the complexity of

Conversational uses of Mandarin Chinese buran (‘not so’) in casual conversations Yu-Fang Wang, Wayne Schams, Ming-Fang Lin and Shih-Yao Chen Abstract: Chinese buran, literally meaning ‘not so,’ can be a marker of negative conditionality expressing the speaker’s (un)desirability toward some event and can be used to introduce a proposal or suggestion. Although many studies have analyzed buran, most of them have examined its usage in written texts and have focused on its meaning and/or functions as a negative conditional conjunct. In conversation, buran frequently co-occurs with questions in “nonconventional uses” and as such deserves closer attention. This study attempts to explore both the conventional and nonconventional uses of buran in casual

The topics were conditionals: The origin and evolution of a rGyalrong topic marker (in Chinese) You-Jing Lin 摘要:专论话题标记来源的相关研究中，尚未有文献提到话题标记可能来自条件结构。尽管学界接受Haiman(1978)“条件就是话题”的主张，但有学者进一步陈明：“话题不是条件”(Shin 1987)。本文考察嘉戎语口语材料，论证嘉戎语话题标记=mənaŋorə的来源为动词条件结构mə-na-ŋôs=rə [COND-PFV-COP=TOP]。笔者认为卓克基话的条件句之所以能发展成话题，主要因素有三。第一，条件动词的主要词干是不具语义的系词；第二，条件小句一如嘉戎语大多数小句，是动词置于句末；第三，条件小句与主要小句的相对位置不具对调的弹性。条件标记赋予了系词标示“已知”、“预设”信息的功能，系词条件小句在信息属性和补语与动词相对位置两方面，都与带话题标记的名词短语雷同，从“条件小句+主要小句”演变为“话题—述题”就万事俱备了。基于以上论据，加上嘉戎语和突厥语族语言的相关例证，我们可以说在这些语言中“话题曾是条件”。

Diffusion of the interrogative pronoun Sha ‘啥’ from Mandarin to Wu: A view of dialect contact (in Chinese) Yimin Sheng 摘要：本文是一项吴语虚词史的研究，探讨吴语疑问代词“啥”的来源。一般认为吴语的“啥”来源于“什么”类的合音，可是吴语声母存在清浊对立，需要解释为何“什”类浊声母在吴语中合音的结果是清声母的“啥”。文章首先讨论了“啥”在吴语中的地理分布样态和表意功能差异，然后构拟了其早期语音形式。在此基础上，文章主张“啥”的合音是在宋代汴洛地区完成的，而吴语中的“啥”则是宋室南渡之后，由汴洛移民带入的成分。

On the modeling of homophony syllabary in Chinese dialects Nankai Wu, Xingquan Hou and Jiangping Kong Abstract: Phonetic comparison of Chinese dialects has been an important issue of academic interest. There are still some prominent problems with various existing metric comparison methods, such as randomness of phonemic processing and insufficient sampling of cognates or core words. Therefore, this paper proposes a new method using homophonic syllabary as the modeling object. Compared to existing methods, the present method has more advantages in terms of materials and methods. On the one hand, compared with phonological systems, syllabic lists or limited number of selected words, homophonic syllabaries are more representative

Ethic integration and evolution of the phonological features of Northern Standard Chinese Language Weimin Wang ABSTRACT: Ethnic integration is often accompanied by language contact and language shift. The process of “ethnic integration” is the process of “remolding” northern standard Chinese language into an inter-ethnic language and ultimately into a common national language. Only by reevaluating the phonological rules and structure of the languages (mainly Altaic) of northern non-Han ethnic groups and investigating the interference with and influence on Chinese during the language shift by the non-Han ethnic groups, can we comprehend that the common national language is a language community jointly shaped by the Han people

Acoustic patterns in Hong Kong Cantonese hesitation markers: Vowel quality and omnisyllabic tone Robert Marcelo Sevilla ABSTRACT: Hesitation markers (HMs) lie somewhere on the dividing line between linguistic and sub-linguistic, evincing at the same time crosslinguistic commonalities as well as language-specific features (Candea et al. 2005; Dingemanse and Woensdregt 2020). This study seeks to expand on understanding of these lexically peripheral items by analyzing their acoustic properties in Hong Kong Cantonese (HKCT), including vowel quality and F0. Recent work by Dingemanse and Woensdregt (2020) discusses phonetic similarities in HMs across languages, which are constrained by adherence to the phonologies of their respective languages. However, it is