Chinese is commonly believed to be an analytic language,but evidence from philological works and cross-linguistic comparisons clearly suggests that various morphological operations existed in Old Chinese.The loss of C...Chinese is commonly believed to be an analytic language,but evidence from philological works and cross-linguistic comparisons clearly suggests that various morphological operations existed in Old Chinese.The loss of Chinese morphology can be explained by the ideographic nature of Chinese characters:the Chinese language has been evolving in a way that stabilizes the pronunciation of each character.The effects of writing systems on language evolution can be widely observed from world languages,while writing per se has been evolving along the path of phonetization driven mainly by borrowings instead of conscious linguistic analysis.In history,language never picked writing systems based on linguistic features;instead,writing systems affect the evolutionary paths of languages:single signs of a writing system stabilize the basic units of the language.展开更多
Change-of-state events all involve complex event structures,but still differ in their levels of complexity.In Old Chinese,all types of change-of-state events could be expressed by individual characters,but as Chinese ...Change-of-state events all involve complex event structures,but still differ in their levels of complexity.In Old Chinese,all types of change-of-state events could be expressed by individual characters,but as Chinese evolved,many change-of-state expressions must resort to verbal compounds.By looking at the change-of-state expressions in different historical periods,this study finds that while the meaning of each character becomes increasingly atomic,the use of verbal compounds has been expanding The most dramatic expansion is seen in the expression of the gradient change of state,followed by the punctual change of state,but is not observed in the durative change-of-state expressions.Consistent with the principle of iconicity,“the durative change-the punctual change-the gradient change”represents a continuum of complexity in human conceptualization,with incremental mental distance between the action and the result state.This finding is also widely supported by cross-linguistic data.展开更多
基金supported by the National Social Science Fund of China(Grant No.20FYYB043)the Interdisciplinary Research Team in Humanities and Social Sciences at Soochow University(Grant No.5033720623).
文摘Chinese is commonly believed to be an analytic language,but evidence from philological works and cross-linguistic comparisons clearly suggests that various morphological operations existed in Old Chinese.The loss of Chinese morphology can be explained by the ideographic nature of Chinese characters:the Chinese language has been evolving in a way that stabilizes the pronunciation of each character.The effects of writing systems on language evolution can be widely observed from world languages,while writing per se has been evolving along the path of phonetization driven mainly by borrowings instead of conscious linguistic analysis.In history,language never picked writing systems based on linguistic features;instead,writing systems affect the evolutionary paths of languages:single signs of a writing system stabilize the basic units of the language.
基金supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 20FYYB043)。
文摘Change-of-state events all involve complex event structures,but still differ in their levels of complexity.In Old Chinese,all types of change-of-state events could be expressed by individual characters,but as Chinese evolved,many change-of-state expressions must resort to verbal compounds.By looking at the change-of-state expressions in different historical periods,this study finds that while the meaning of each character becomes increasingly atomic,the use of verbal compounds has been expanding The most dramatic expansion is seen in the expression of the gradient change of state,followed by the punctual change of state,but is not observed in the durative change-of-state expressions.Consistent with the principle of iconicity,“the durative change-the punctual change-the gradient change”represents a continuum of complexity in human conceptualization,with incremental mental distance between the action and the result state.This finding is also widely supported by cross-linguistic data.
