Sinitic Grammar

This book is an anthology on topics in the grammar of Chinese (Sinitic) languages. The aim of the book is to meld historical and typological approaches in the examination of grammatical phenomena in order to show the extent to which both earlier stages of Chinese, as well as the modern dialects, differ from standard Mandarin. With this purpose in mind, each author has provided important background information on the Chinese language or dialect under investigation-or on the historical period as the case may be. Similarly, the introduction to the book provides an up-to-date description of Sinitic languages in terms of history and geography, placing the goals of the volume into perspective. A dialect map of China and a summary of each chapter is provided in this same introductory chapter to further facilitate use of the book. General readers, curious about Sinitic languages-or Chinese dialects-should find this collection equally accessible as specialists in the fields of Chinese linguistics; typology; historical and diachronic linguistics; grammaticalization; and empirical, descriptive linguistics. Topics covered include aspect, evidentials, locatives, verb complementation, reduplication, modal verbs, markers of predication, affixation, prepositions, relative clauses, interrogatives, and stratification. Language data from most of the ten main Chinese dialect groups are presented, the specific dialect studies being on Xiang, Cantonese Yue, and Taiwanese Southern Min. Earlier stages of Chinese examined include the Pre-Archaic Shang bone inscriptions, Archaic and Medieval Chinese, and the written genre of Classical Chinese.

Hilary Chappell is a senior lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at La Trobe University, Melbourne. During the last six years, she has embarked upon the first large scale typological study of grammatical diversity in Sinitic (Chinese) languages. She has carried out field work and research in China (2 years) and Taiwan (1 year), initially studying at Beijing University. Her publications include a jointly edited volume with William McGregor entitled 'The Grammar of Inalienability' (Mouton de Gruyter, 1995) which has become a standard reference in typology on the topic of grammatical possession. She has also published over 30 book chapters and articles on topics in the grammar of Chinese languages.