Prosodic Phonology of the Fuzhou Dialect: Domains and Rule Application is the first attempt to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Fuzhou phonological system from the perspective of prosodic phonology. It addresses the following issues: What prosodic constituents exist in the Fuzhou dialect and what kinds of roles they play in the Fuzhou phonological system; how to define the domain formation of these prosodic constituents in the Fuzhou dialect; what kinds of Fuzhou phonological phenomena make crucial reference to these prosodic constituents as the domain of application; and what implications does the study of the Fuzhou phonological system have for the prosodic phonology theory. This book is a valuable text for students and scholars in the field of Chinese dialectology, Min dialects, prosodic phonology, and phonology-morphosyntax interface.

Prosody is one of the core components of language and speech, indicating information about syntax, turn-taking in conversation, types of utterances, such as questions or statements, as well as speakers' attitudes and feelings. This edited volume takes studies in prosody on Asian languages as well as examples from other languages. It brings together the most recent research in the field and also charts the influence on such diverse fields as multimedia communication and SLA. Intended for a wide audience of linguists that includes neighbouring disciplines such as computational sciences, psycholinguists, and specialists in language acquisition, Prosodic Studies is also ideal for scholars and researchers working in intonation who want a complement of information on specifics.

This dissertation examines the phonological system of the Fuzhou dialect within the framework of prosodic phonology. It is divided into three parts. Chapter I and Chapter II belong to the first part. Chapter I presents a short introduction to the Fuzhou dialect and a brief review of some previous studies on this dialect. Chapter II introduces the theory of prosodic phonology, and provides the descriptive background on the phonological system of the Fuzhou dialect. The second part is composed of six chapters. From Chapter III to Chapter VIII, I discuss one by one, in detail, different prosodic constituents in terms of their definition and role(s) in the Fuzhou dialect, including the syllable, the foot, the prosodic word, the clitic group, the phonological phrase, and the intonational phrase. The third part (Chapter IX) summarizes the discoveries and conclusions drawn in this dissertation. There are three major issues regarding prosodic constituents discussed in this dissertation: (a) whether these constituents exist and play a role in the phonological system of the Fuzhou dialect; (b) how to define the domain formation of these constituents in the Fuzhou dialect; and (c) what kinds of Fuzhou phonological phenomena make crucial reference to these constituents as the domain of application. The second part of this dissertation is a detailed investigation of these issues. First of all, on the basis of the discussion of Fuzhou phonological rules, including phonological tone sandhi (TS), morphological tone sandhi (MTS), final alternation (FA), final change (FC), and initial consonant lenition (CL), this dissertation provides empirical evidence for the existence of most universal prosodic constituents in the Fuzhou dialect. Second, through the analyses of these prosodic constituents, this dissertation proves that the domains of different constituents in this dialect are defined by making use of different types of phonological and non-phonological information. Third, this dissertation demonstrates that different Fuzhou phonological phenomena refer to different prosodic constituents as the domain of application—a particular phenomenon may be triggered within one domain while blocked within another, and one phonological phenomenon that applies within more than one domain may exhibit different degrees of application. Moreover, I propose a restriction on rule application for the Fuzhou dialect, which suggests that when a domain is contained in another domain, a given phenomenon specific to the external domain may not freely be triggered within the embedded domain. With its focus on the prosodic phonology of the Fuzhou dialect, this dissertation not only explores the phonological system of this dialect, but also probes the interactions between phonology and other components of the grammar of this dialect. Thus many aspects of this dialect, such as its phonology, morphology, syntax, and even semantics, are all discussed in this dissertation. As the first attempt to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Fuzhou phonological system from the perspective of prosodic phonology, I hope that this dissertation will provide a thorough description and analysis of the phonological system of the Fuzhou dialect, and will further our understanding of prosodic phonology in general.

This book centers on theoretical issues of phonology-syntax interface based on tone sandhi in Chinese dialects. It uses patterns in tone sandhi to study how speech should be divided into domains of various sizes or levels. Tone sandhi refers to tonal changes that occur to a sequence of adjacent syllables or words. The size of this sequence (or the domain) is determined by various factors, in particular the syntactic structure of the words and the original tones of the words. Chinese dialects offer a rich body of data on tone sandhi, and hence great evidence for examining the phonology-syntax interface, and for examining the resulting levels of domains (the prosodic hierarchy). Syntax-Phonology Interface: Argumentation from Tone Sandhi in Chinese Dialects is an extremely valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the fields of linguistics and Chinese.

Locality in Grammar: From Narrow Syntax to Interfaces investigates the operation of locality conditions in syntax and semantics from a cross-linguistic perspective. It is claimed that there are two different types of locality conditions. One is the Generalized Minimality Condition (GMC), and the other is the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC). This book demonstrates that these locality conditions play different roles in different computational components of human language, and, therefore, cannot be unified as one constraint as proposed in the literature. The main idea of the book is that the two different locality conditions are sensitive to the difference between syntactic derivation and semantic interpretation and that of overt and covert syntactic derivations. Further investigation shows a more fine-grained distinction must be made between syntactic computations. It is true that GMC does not constrain overt syntactic derivations and PIC does not play a role in semantic interpretations; however, they both regulate covert syntactic computations. This book will inform postgraduate students and scholars in the field of linguistics.

The Acquisition of Anaphora in Child Mandarin explores how Mandarin-speaking children’s interpretation of the reflexive ziji and their use of null arguments can be understood under the notions of locality and prominence. This book investigates the interpretation of ziji and the use of null subjects and null objects by experimenting on Mandarin-speaking children and adults using a range of experimental techniques such as the truth value judgment task, the picture identification task, and the story-telling task. The book provides evidence to show that reflexive binding and argument dropping are determined by the interplay between universal principles and language-specific properties. It shows that children at the age of 4 make an adult-like distinction between the anaphoric and logophoric interpretations of ziji. The former is subject to the locality condition manifested by the blocking effect on the long-distance binding of ziji, whereas the latter is free from the locality condition and closely related to the understanding of the false beliefs of others. This book is an important contribution to language acquisition research and can serve as a valuable reference for graduate students and researchers in the field of language acquisition, Chinese linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science.

Nantong Chinese is an in-depth account of an interesting and endangered Sinitic language spoken in Nantong, China, in an area in the Northern Yangtze River Delta about 800 square kilometers in size and 105 kilometers northwest of the city of Shanghai. The Chinese language consists of several hundred local varieties known as Sinitic languages or Chinese dialects, each representing a unique linguistic system. This book offers a comprehensive and systematic insight into one such system that is even more complex and more interesting than standard Mandarin. The unique vocalization and other linguistic features of Nantong Chinese make it unintelligible to most Chinese people. All the important linguistic aspects of Nantong Chinese are covered, including its phonetic, lexical, morphological and syntactic subsystems. Nantong Chinese will be of interest to professionals and students in linguistics worldwide.

The Right Periphery in L2 Chinese is among the first books to try to incorporate both advanced linguistic and acquisition perspectives to show how eight sentence-final particles are represented in English-speaking learners’ L2 Chinese. This book will inform researchers of the general construction of the right periphery in L2 grammars. Drawing on up-to-date theoretical frameworks and findings from advanced empirical studies, it sketches the general picture of the periphery that these particles occupy in English-Chinese interlanguages. Readers will grasp the problems and difficulties, and particularly the ambiguities, which learners of Chinese must grapple with in the process of acquiring sentence-final particles. Possible influential factors underlying the acquisition process are explicitly discussed as well. Researchers will also find insights in the advanced methodologies and statistics that are used to study Chinese. The book will be illuminating for researchers interested in SLA, linguists of generative theories, and educators teaching Chinese as a second/foreign language.

Exhaustivity, Contrastivity, and the Semantics of Mandarin Cleft-related Structures investigates the semantics of the cleft and cleft-related structures in Mandarin, which, over several decades, have presented analytical challenges for semantic theory. The goal of this book, in broad terms, is three-fold: (i) to figure out what clefting adds to the semantics of a sentence; (ii) to set apart the meaning and the discourse function of each type of cleft-related structure; and (iii) to provide a uniform analysis of Mandarin clefts and their related structures. More specifically, it addresses the following questions: (i) what is the semantics of Mandarin clefts? (ii) what do exhaustivity and contrastivity contribute to the meaning of clefts? (iii) what are the semantic (or pragmatic) factors that determine the variation of clefts, related structures, and canonical sentences? and (iv) cross-linguistically speaking, how do Mandarin shi...de cleft and its related structures differ from similar constructions such as English it-cleft, French c’est cleft, and German es-cleft? This book will be informative for linguists who are working on cleft constructions and focus on sensitive structures cross-linguistically, and those interested in experimental semantics and pragmatics.

Looking at everyday Mandarin Chinese conversations, this book provides a comprehensive examination of the practices used in producing Chinese increments. Increments have been identified as a key nexus that evinces how human interactional practices are fundamental to the structuration of grammar. Lim examines the common interactional work these increments do in their sequential context and what implications these findings have for our understanding of language and grammar. Based on the examination of actual interactional practices by Chinese speakers, findings show that all types of grammatically fitted and unfitted increments can be produced in a situated context. The research in this book also demonstrates how similar action can be pursued using different types of increments and that more than one “task” or action may be concurrently and subtly accomplished with the use of a single increment. The results indicate how the regular everyday practices of Chinese increment, formulated in moment-to-moment interaction, instantiate and endorse multiple principles expounded in emergent grammar, thereby adding to our wider understanding of language and grammar. This book will primarily interest researchers, graduate students, and educators working within the field of interactional linguistics and conversation analysis, in particular those in Chinese-speaking regions. As research on non-English data is still very limited in these areas, the book will also be useful for researchers with broad interests in the Chinese language.