This thesis investigates the morpho-syntax of the aspectual system in one variety of Xiāng (namely: Chángshā), which is one of the ten sub-families of Chinese. Two of the idiosyncratic properties... Show moreThis thesis investigates the morpho-syntax of the aspectual system in one variety of Xiāng (namely: Chángshā), which is one of the ten sub-families of Chinese. Two of the idiosyncratic properties in Xiāng Chinese is that one aspect marker is used to express more than one meaning or that more than one element is used to express one aspectual meaning. I base my analysis on the assumption that inner aspect in Xiāng is a three-layered structure: Asp3P, Asp2P and Asp1P.I focus on two aspect particles, ta21 and ka41. I argue that we have two particles sharing the same morphological form: ta21PERF and ta21PROG. The difference between the two particles lies in the different syntactic positions they occupy. I also point out that ka41 should not be treated as a perfective marker. I suggest that descriptively, ka41 doubles the already existing endpoint and that it does so to make the endpoint definitive. ka41 is used to block further access to the activity preceding the lexical endpoint (for example, such event cannot be present in the progressive). I point out that in Chángshā and Xiāng in general, all three Inner aspect positions can be lexically realized. Show less
Tonal bilinguals of two closely related Chinese dialects handle two tonal systems in their mind; their two vocabularies are from closely related dialects; and they write translation equivalents... Show moreTonal bilinguals of two closely related Chinese dialects handle two tonal systems in their mind; their two vocabularies are from closely related dialects; and they write translation equivalents with common Chinese characters. Their unique language situation makes their mind special. This thesis investigates these tonal bilinguals’ lexical processing mechanism, studying how they produce and understand words. Their situation provides a valuable test case for a few important theories on bilingual lexical access. Bilingual lexical processing is flexible, influenced by the task and language mode. Moreover, compared with tonal monolinguals, these tonal bilinguals not only showed classical advantages in executive control, but sometimes even perform faster with lexical tasks. The structure of the bilingual lexicon can cause important differences in bilingual lexical processing and the corresponding functions of executive control. Show less
In most languages, focus (i.e. highlighting information) is marked by modifying the melody of the sentence. But how is focus marked in a Chinese dialect with eight different citation tones and a... Show moreIn most languages, focus (i.e. highlighting information) is marked by modifying the melody of the sentence. But how is focus marked in a Chinese dialect with eight different citation tones and a complex tonal phonology?This thesis investigates the connection between tonal realization and tone change (tone sandhi) in Wenzhou Chinese, and whether and how such a connection is conditioned by prosodic structure and focus marking. Experiments were conducted with young speakers of Wenzhou Chinese, whose speech was acoustically analyzed so as to investigate the application domain of tone sandhi and the influence of focus thereon, the tonal realization on the word and phrase level and its interaction with focus, the pre-planning of sentential pitch, as well as the realization of referents with different information statuses. The experimental findings suggest that the application, but not the implementation, of tone sandhi is independent of focus, and that focus and prosodic structure have similar but independent effects on the realization of lexical tones. It is also shown that pitch scaling is sensitive to syntactic structure and complexity, and that the marking of givenness, broad focus, and narrow focus leads to discrete levels along the same acoustic parameters. These findings are of interest to researchers working on lexical tone, prosodic structure, and how information structure categories such as focus affect tonal realization and prosodic phrasing. Show less
