LINGUIST List 6.425

Fri 24 Mar 1995

Qs: Turn measurement, Chinese grammar, Slang and rock music

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1. "MS SA HUNT", TURN MEASUREMENT
2. David Gil, QUERY: CHINESE GRAMMATICAL MARKERS
3. , Inquiry re: slang and rock music

Dear Linguists
This is a desperate plea for information regarding software which
enables one to time turn-taking in natural conversation. I have
followed up a number of references to such devices in the literature
but to no avail! What I need is something which will time
(more accurately than Me plus Stopwatch) turns, silence between
turns, and, if possible, overlaps.
Anyone who knows of something which could be persuaded to do this for
me, please let me know as this is becoming rather urgent.



Sally Hunt
Linguistics Department
Rhodes University
Grahamstown 6140
South Africa
e-mail: lishwarthog.ru.ac.za
Phone: +27 - 461 - 318105/6 (W)
Fax: +27 - 461 - 25049

I'm interested in any information regarding the diachronic
development of the following grammatical markers in various
Chinese languages (apologies for the email-mutilated
transcriptions):

(1) Mandarin:
 [de] (the "genitive"/"relative" marker)
(2) Mandarin:
 [ge] (the general numeral classifier)
(3) Shanghainese:
 [ge] (the "genitive"/"relative" marker)
(4) Hokkien:
 [e] (a) (the "genitive"/"relative" marker)
 (b) (the general numeral classifier)
(5) Teochew:
 [kai] (a) (the "genitive"/"relative" marker)
 (b) (the general numeral classifier)
(6) Cantonese:
 [ge] (the "genitive"/"relative" marker)
 [go] (the general numeral classifier)
 [dik] (the ligature)

More specifically:

QUESTION 1: Which of the above markers are historically /
etymologically related to which others, ie. deriving from a
diachronically reconstructable common source? (eg. are
Mandarin [de] and Cantonese [dik] diachronically related?,
etc. etc.)

QUESTION 2: (Specific to Hokkien and Teochew) Most native
speakers of Hokkien and Teochew, who are also speakers of
Mandarin, are of the opinion that there are two distinct
markers exhibiting accidental homophony: a
"genitive"/"relative" [e]/[kai] corresponding to Mandarin
[de], and a "classifier" [e]/[kai] corresponding to
Mandarin [ge]. QUESTION 2A: Is it demonstrably the case
that [e] and [kai] are the respective products of DIACHRONIC
coalescence of distinct forms at some earlier stage of the
language? QUESTION 2B: Are there any valid SYNCHRONIC
arguments for positing two distinct lexical items, ie. two
[e]'s in Hokkien, and two [kai]'s in Teochew? (I consider
the choice of characters conventionally used to represent
these markers as irrelevant.)

Note: I am a general linguist, not a Sinologist, and I
don't read or speak Chinese. I would greatly appreciate
either your own views on the above questions, or references
to published works addressing these questions. However, if
the references happen to be in Chinese, I would be
extremely grateful if you could provide a synopsis of their
contents.

Thanks,

David Gil
National University of Singapore
ellgildnusvm.bitnet

I am working on a project where I need to explore the relationship between
rock & roll music and current slang. Any suggestions on previous studies or
books or any contributions would be greatly appreciated. I will post a
summary and E-mail directly to anyone who requests a follow up.

Thank you

Carolyn Chriss
Carozaaol.com