Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Sino-Platonic Papers, 27 (August 3 1, 199 1)
Notes
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1989 International Conference
on Sino-Tibet an Languages and Linguistics, October 5-8, 1989, University of Hawaii,
Honolulu, Hawaii. I would like to thank people who attended the conference, especially
Prof. S. H. Teng of University of Massachusetts and Prof. Jian-ming Lu of University of
Peking, for comments. Thanks are also due to the National Science Council of Republic of
China for providing a travel grant to enable me to present the paper.
1. Depending on whether the locative zai Mei~uo 'in America' is a topic or not, (2) can
have two different interpretations as shown in (i) and (ii) in the English translation. The
same comment applies to the temporal zuotian 'yesterday' in (5). We will have more to
say about this point in our later discussion.
2. The following symbols and abbreviations are used in giving the English gloss:
ASP = aspect marker CL = classifier
POSS = genitive marker PART = particle
LOC = localizer Rel. Mar.= relative clause marker
3. For this point, also see Li and Thompson, 1981.
4. For a brief discussion of the notion of definiteness, see Tsao, 1979, Chapter 5.
5. A scope-delimiting expression is a term coined by the writer to refer to a
prepositional phrase or, more commonly in Chineses, a nominal which is used as a topic,
primary or non-primary, to set a scope within which the following comment is to be
interpreted. (10) and (i) below are two sentences containing such an expression.
liu-xue-de shi ,
'i' [%:tgiard to) study:abroad-Rel. Mar. matter
zhengfu zao gui ding-le banfa
government long: ago stipulate-ASP regulation
le.
PART
With regard to the matter of studying abroad, the government set up
regulations long ago. '
For more examples of this kind in Classical Chinese see Wang (1980, Chapter 3, Section
44).
6. Whether in (13) yong in the phrase yone: gouzhen should be analyzed as a
preposition i.e. 'with' or a verb i.e., 'use' is a point that we will not take up here, as to deal
with it will certainly take us too far afield. Suffice it to point out that my present
hypothesis is that if yong occurs within the scope of a manner adverb as in (i), then it is a
verb. If it occurs outside the scope of a manner adverb as in (ii), then it is a preposition.
(i) ta yong bianzi henhen-de da-zhe nei-ge xiaohai.
he with whip savagely beat-ASP that-CL child
'He beat the child with a whip savagely.'
(ii) ta henhen-de yong bianzi da-zhe nei-ge xiaohai.
he savagely use whip beat-ASP that-CL child
'He used a whip to beat the child savagely.'
It follows that we don't quite agree with Chuo in analyzing gong eouzhen in (13) as an