Phonation types and morpho-phonological structure as linguistic prerequisites of tonogenesis Xiaonong Zhu ABSTRACT: This paper provides a systematic account of tonogenesis. The emergence of tone is a process of pitch upgrading from an accompanying feature of phonation types to a distinctive feature. It involves three linguistic processes: Various phonation types, clear, breathy, falsetto, etc., which intrinsically induce pitch differences; sonorous mono-syllabic morpheme structure that enhances the pitch differences; and phonologization, which conceptualizes the enhanced pitch differences to a phonological category, tone. A flowchart is designed to show how the preconditions lead to different phono-morphological types of the world’s languages and finally output tone, and its later

The role of breathy voice in Hmu tone perception Wen Liu, Gang Peng, Jiangping Kong ABSTRACT: Previous studies on tone perception have mainly focused on the role of F0, while there are few but increasing studies on the effect of non-modal phonation. This study investigates the role of non-modal phonation in perceiving the five level tones used in Hmu, in which the lowest level tone (T11) is often referred to as “breathy voice”. First, an acoustic analysis was conducted on those tones to determine the voice quality and whether breathiness is limited to specific tones, revealing that breathiness only co-occurs with T11. Second, a perception experiment

The phonetic realization of laryngeal contrasts in Lili Wu Chinese: Evidence from tone-sandhi medial position 史濛辉  白子一  陈轶亚 摘要：喉部特征的语音实现受韵律环境影响。本研究考察了黎里吴语塞音声母三分特征在连调域词中位置上的语音实现。在单字及连调域词首位置，黎里吴语以中古调类为条件(上去入)出现“送气分调”现象，即送气声母后元音的基频(f0)显著低于不送气声母后的，与浊声母后元音的f0接近。实验结果显示，在连调域词中位置，“送气分调”现象消失，取而代之的是类似上海话的典型的“首音节控制”连读变调模式，不同声母条件下的f0趋同。但浊音起始时间(VOT)及第一、二谐波差(H1*–H2*)能在一定程度上将不同声母区别开来。此外，前字音高及后字音节结构都对塞音声母的语音实现有影响。这些结果一方面体现了黎里吴语声母与声调的音系特征同语音实现之间的多样性；另一方面也体现了音系规则与语音规则的复杂联系，进一步说明了实验方法在探究汉语方言语音议题上的重要性。

Indefinite article kɤʔ5 (个) and three types of indefinite noun phrases in Guangfeng dialect of Shangrao, Jiangxi Qingwen Zhang, Cui Jiang ABSTRACT: A controversy exists regarding whether there are tense-lax vowels in Lahu and whether tense-lax phonation should be accorded phonological status, an issue that is closely related to the physiological movement of the larynx. This study presents an experimental analysis of the acoustic features of the Lahu dialect of Yunshan, using electroglottography to collect acoustic and physiological data and employing VoiceSauce and Eggworks to extract glottal features to explore laryngeal mode of motion. The study demonstrates a distinct tense-lax phonation contrast in Yunshan Lahu, which

Multi-functions of ʦɿ31-512 (phon512-20) “做(伴)” and its semantic changes of Jishui dialect in Jiangxi Guilan Li ABSTRACT : Similar with he or ken in Mandarin, ʦɿ31-512 (做) of Jishui dialect in Jiangxi functions as comitative, animate directional and comparative preposition as well as coordinator, which can be substituted by the disyllabic functional words ʦɿ31-51 phon512-20(做伴), ʦɿ31-51 pho20(做嘙) or ʦɿ31-51 te20(做得). This paper explores the functions of ʦɿ31-512 as well as its disyllable and explores their semantic sources and pathway of semantic changes. It claims that the comitative ʦɿ31-51 phon512-20 originates from verb ʦɿ31-33 phon512meaning accompany, and it is reanalyzed with tonal change in the situation where

Mental state, volition and argument realization Jiajuan Xiong, Chu-Ren Huang ABSTRACT: We explore argument realization in the resultative V-de construction under the framework of the Theta System. We find that the theta grids of the resultative V-de construction are of two types, i.e., ([+c-m], [-c]) and ([+c-m], [-m]), depending on the (a-)thematic relation between the verb and second/internal argument. Crucially, the external argument always has a /-m feature (the minus value of the mental state), regardless of its animacy, leading to a non-volitional Agent reading (animate) and a Cause reading (inanimate). It is due to this [+c-m] feature cluster that the construction yields an unintended result

Does Chinese need two structures for classifiers? A case study Dandan Tan ABSTRACT: The syntactic structure of the classifiers in Chinese has been assumed or argued to be left-branching, right-branching or mixed. This article examines three facts-number-classfier-de, the use of duo ‘extra, more’ and the conditional deletion of number––which are regarded by Xuping Li (2013) as evidence for the mixed structures. It is shown that the purported facts are partial and, when more related facts are taken into consideration, they together are equally compatible with an exclusively left-branching structure and thus cannot serve as support for a mixed structure analysis. Three kinds of arguments are reviewed

Making some progress on the progressive aspect zài in Mandarin Chinese Waltraud Paul, Shanshan Yan ABSTRACT: Taking into account data hitherto neglected, this article examines the progressive aspect zài 在in Mandarin Chinese and related issues. We argue in favour of the constituency [AspP zài在 [V-zhe着]] and demonstrate important syntactic and semantic differences between the progressive aspect zài 在and the durative aspect -zhe着. Importantly, unlike ‘zài在 V’, ‘V-zhe着’ is only acceptable as the sole predicate in a root sentence when interpretable as a (derived) state. Otherwise, the presence of the progressive aspect zài在 is required: ‘zài在 V-zhe着’. This crucial role of zài在 is often obscured by its

Visualizing cross-linguistic reading brains: Universality and interactive specificities Jun Ren Lee, Wen-Jui Kuo, Rose Ru-Whui Lee and Ovid J. L. Tzeng ABSTRACT: The universality and specificity of cross-linguistic reading have always been a topic of interest to researchers. The earliest controversies started with the issue of whether speech recoding is required for reading non-alphabetic scripts, for example, Chinese and Kanji, whether it is possible to directly access the semantic meaning of a word from orthography without speech recoding, and whether reading non-alphabetic scripts relies on the right rather than the left brain. The abatement of these controversies began with a series of experiments by Ovid Tzeng

Insight Article Exploring the Low Applicative Hilary Chappell Abstract:Tone morphemes are used in the coding of a variety of grammatical functions in Sinitic languages: These include plural formation of personal pronouns, the diminutive forms of nouns, as well as different kinds of perfective and completive aspect marking, reported for dialects located in non-contiguous areas of China in the north and the south. With respect to verbal morphology, we first examine the different processes and stages of morphologization between the Yue and Hakka dialects, on the one hand, and Northern Sinitic on the other. Second, we propose the pathway of evolution that leads to the pluralization of Sinitic