Syntactic Change in Xining Mandarin Daniel Bell Submitted to the School
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Syntactic Change in Xining Mandarin Daniel Bell Submitted to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Newcastle University January 2017 ©2017 Daniel Bell All rights reserved This page is intentionally left blank ii Abstract This dissertation discusses the Xining Mandarin dialect (spoken in Qinghai province, northwest China), a variety in which head-final syntax has emerged on the model of local Mongolic languages and Tibetan. The underlying socio-historical scenario is explored in detail and analysed as a case of ‘fort creolization’ (Bickerton 1988). An overview is then provided of how head-final categories emerged in the dialect, namely through reanalysing Chinese form-meaning units to fulfil functions found in the substrate languages, with comparatively little reordering of grammatical devices inherent to Chinese or outright borrowing of substrate forms. The relevant changes are discussed in relation to Heine and Kuteva’s (2005) model of contact-induced grammaticalization and findings from creole studies. Detailed discussion of the dialect’s clausal syntax focuses on aspect marking, tense/mood marking, non-lexical functions of SAY and object scrambling. With regard to the aspectual system, an account is proposed of ZHE, which is typologically unusual in showing imperfective/perfective polysemy. Tense and modality is then considered with regard to the sentential particle lia, and its future marking function is seen to be conditioned by the aspectual class of the sentence, providing evidence of aspectually sensitive tenses (de Swart 1998) in Chinese. In terms of non-lexical functions of SAY, a range of clause-final uses are discussed, including as a complementizer and volitional mood marker, whilst discourse marking uses of SAY are interpreted in light of Traugott’s (1995, 2010) notion of (inter)subjectification. Finally, object fronting in the dialect is shown to possess the properties of Japanese style scrambling, despite the absence of this type of movement across other Chinese dialects. Its existence in the Xining dialect, where phrase-structure change has occurred from head-initial to head-final, is argued to provide broad support for the correlation between head-final syntax and scrambling formalized by the Generalized Holmberg Constraint (Wallenberg 2009). iii Acknowledgements I would like to firstly thank my supervisors, Anders Holmberg and Joel Wallenberg for many interesting and helpful discussions of issues in this dissertation, and for their invaluable oversight and encouragement throughout the process of writing this dissertation. I am also very grateful for support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), without which this research would not have been possible, as well as from the Universities' China Committee in London (UCCL), the School of English Language, Literature and Linguistics (Newcastle University) and the Humanities and Social Science Faculty (Newcastle University). Thanks are due too to all my friends, informants and teachers (especially Teacher Geng) in Xining for assistance during my stay there and for sharing their knowledge of their dialect with me. In addition, I would like to thank my family for all they have done, including creating a permutation generator to enable the study of word order variation, and my wife in particular for offering tremendous support and assistance in every way that she could. Finally, I am grateful to God for everything that I have had the chance to learn during this project, and for the prayers and friendship of my fellow PhD students and others in Newcastle. iv This page is intentionally left blank v Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... xi List of Figures ......................................................................................................................... xii Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................ xiii Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Socio-linguistic Background ................................................................................. 3 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Linguistic overview of Xining Mandarin ................................................................ 3 2.3 Socio-linguistic and geographical context ............................................................... 4 2.4 History of the contact scenario in the Qinghai-Gansu region ............................... 6 2.4.1 The ancestor language of the Xining dialect: lower Yangtze Chinese .............. 11 2.5 First phase of language contact: fort creolization ................................................ 16 2.5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 16 2.5.2 Abrupt language shift hypothesis ....................................................................... 17 2.5.3 Critique of the shift hypothesis .......................................................................... 19 2.5.4 Trade fort pidgins and the Xining dialect .......................................................... 21 2.5.4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 21 2.5.4.2 The Monguor .................................................................................................. 25 2.5.4.3 The socio-geographical context of the Monguor and Chinese communities in the Ming period ............................................................................................................. 26 2.5.4.4 Monguor and Chinese demographics in the Ming period .............................. 29 2.5.4.5 Monguor-Chinese interactions in the Ming period ........................................ 30 2.5.4.5.1 Trade .......................................................................................................... 31 2.5.4.5.2 Monguor-Chinese intermarriage ................................................................ 33 2.5.4.5.3 On the Monguor elite class ........................................................................ 35 2.5.4.6 Language shift during the Qing dynasty ........................................................ 37 2.5.5 Section summary ................................................................................................ 39 2.6 Second phase of language contact: the influence of Standard Mandarin in modern times ...................................................................................................................... 41 2.6.1 Modern day language shift ................................................................................. 43 2.7 Background to this study ........................................................................................ 45 Chapter 3 Head-final Syntax in the Xining Dialect ............................................................ 49 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 49 3.2 Overview .................................................................................................................. 49 3.3 Reordering ............................................................................................................... 52 3.3.1 Verb-object à object-verb (and back again) ..................................................... 52 3.3.2 Aux (necessative)-VP à VP-Aux (necessative) ............................................... 59 vi 3.3.3 O-V-ZHE to V-O-ZHE ...................................................................................... 60 3.4 New head-final orders through functional transfer ............................................. 62 3.4.1 SAY complementizer ......................................................................................... 63 3.4.2 SAY hearsay/quotative marker .......................................................................... 64 3.4.3 Object marker ha ................................................................................................ 65 3.4.4 Future tense/modal lia ........................................................................................ 67 3.5 New head-final orders through borrowing ........................................................... 68 3.5.1 Ablative postposition ......................................................................................... 69 3.5.2 Possibility modal ................................................................................................ 69 3.6 Comitative/instrumental postposition (an indeterminate case) .......................... 70 3.7 Contact-induced grammaticalization in Xining Mandarin? ............................... 71 3.7.1 Background .......................................................................................................