A Grammar of Shaowu
eBook - PDF

A Grammar of Shaowu

A Sinitic Language of Northwestern Fujian

  1. 733 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

A Grammar of Shaowu

A Sinitic Language of Northwestern Fujian

About this book

This is the first comprehensive grammar of Shaowu, a Min language spoken in Shaowu city and its environs in northwestern Fujian province, China. The book offers first-hand linguistic data collected over four years in the field, now placed at the disposal of researchers and students working in language documentation, comparative linguistics and Sinitic typology. It can serve as a reference grammar for those interested in learning the Shaowu language, thereby helping to preserve it. In addition, the book provides insights into Shaowu's classification which has been widely debated, thus elucidating its genetic affiliation.

The book first presents Shaowu's geography, demography and history. It then profiles the language's phonology and lexicon, before providing a detailed description of its syntax, notably on its nominal, predicate, clausal and complex sentence structures, which are the focus of the book.

The typological profile of Shaowu is also treated with the conclusion that the language has Gan, Hakka, Mandarin and even some Wu overlays on its Min base. The Shaowu language serves an excellent example to illustrate the degree of hybridity a language can attain due to intensive language contact over time.

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Yes, you can access A Grammar of Shaowu by Sing Sing Ngai in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Chinese History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Preface
  2. Acknowledgements
  3. Contents
  4. List of tables
  5. List of maps
  6. List of abbreviations
  7. Glossary of specific terms and notational symbols
  8. Abstract
  9. Résumé
  10. Shaowu as a Sinitic language
  11. Periodisation of Sinitic
  12. Special characters and symbols, transcription and glossing conventions
  13. Background & overview
  14. Chapter 1 Introduction
  15. Chapter 2 Geography, demography and history of Shaowu
  16. Part I: Phonetics & phonology
  17. Introduction
  18. Chapter 3 Phonology
  19. Part II: Nominal structure
  20. Introduction
  21. Chapter 4 Pronominal systems
  22. Chapter 5 Classifier systems and counting paradigms
  23. Chapter 6 Affixal morphology
  24. Chapter 7 Reduplication
  25. Chapter 8 Compounding
  26. Chapter 9 Kinship terms
  27. Chapter 10 Locative adpositions around NPs
  28. Chapter 11 Relative clauses
  29. Chapter 12 Possessive noun phrases and inalienability
  30. Part III: Predicate structure
  31. Introduction
  32. Chapter 13 Verb classes
  33. Chapter 14 Adpositional phrases
  34. Chapter 15 Adverbs and adverbial phrases
  35. Chapter 16 Negation and negative markers
  36. Chapter 17 Modality, modal auxiliaries and their syntax
  37. Chapter 18 Postverbal complements of manner, extent and degree and their markers
  38. Chapter 19 Postverbal complements and compounds of result, direction and potentiality
  39. Chapter 20 Aspectual system
  40. Part IV: Clausal structure
  41. Introduction
  42. Chapter 21 Topic-comment sentence constructions
  43. Chapter 22 Structures of comparison
  44. Chapter 23 Multifunctional morpheme [pɔŋ21] 帮 and its grammaticalisation pathways
  45. Chapter 24 Benefactive constructions
  46. Chapter 25 Object-marking constructions
  47. Chapter 26 Multifunctional morpheme [tie53] 得 and its grammaticalisation pathways
  48. Chapter 27 Ditransitive constructions
  49. Chapter 28 Passive constructions
  50. Chapter 29 Causative constructions
  51. Chapter 30 Existential and identity constructions
  52. Chapter 31 Copular constructions
  53. Chapter 32 Locative constructions
  54. Chapter 33 Interrogative structures: Polar, disjunctive and content questions
  55. Chapter 34 Imperatives and other moods
  56. Chapter 35 Clause-final particles
  57. Part V: Complex sentences & clause combining
  58. Introduction
  59. Chapter 36 Coordination
  60. Chapter 37 Subordination
  61. Chapter 38 Temporal subordination of simultaneity and sequentiality
  62. Chapter 39 Causal constructions
  63. Chapter 40 Conditional constructions
  64. Chapter 41 Concessive constructions
  65. Chapter 42 Purposive constructions
  66. Chapter 43 Other types of complementation in complex sentences
  67. Chapter 44 Co-subordination
  68. Chapter 45 Conclusion
  69. Part VI: Lexicon
  70. Chapter 46 Mini lexicon
  71. Part VII: Transcription samples
  72. A children’s song
  73. Shaowu, the Iron City
  74. Shaowu and its geography
  75. Bibliography
  76. Index