LINGUIST List 15.1120

Mon Apr 5 2004

Qs: Crossling Grammaticalization; Chinese Phonology

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Directory

  • Amy Kuether, Crosslinguistic grammaticalization of 'have'
  • Benedetta Bassetti, Standard Chinese phonology

    Message 1: Crosslinguistic grammaticalization of 'have'

     Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 16:07:58 -0500
    From: Amy Kuether <amykuetherYAHOO.COM>
    Subject: Crosslinguistic grammaticalization of 'have'


    Hi,

    I'm doing some research for a class on grammaticalization of possessive verbs comparable to English 'have' across languages. I've found a lot of data for Romance and Germanic languages, as well as Kru languages, however, I would like to expand my sample to be much wider and hopefully more representative. Could anyone advise me on languages I should look into or alternatively, do you know or speak a language which expresses possession with a verb like 'have' and in which that verb has also grammaticalized to some extent and if so could you describe this for me?

    Thank you for your time and assistance,

    Amy

    Message 2: Standard Chinese phonology

     Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 12:32:18 -0500 (EST)
    From: Benedetta Bassetti <benedettaonetel.net.uk>
    Subject: Standard Chinese phonology


    Dear Linguists,

    I have a question regarding the phonology of two Standard Chinese syllables and I would be very grateful for your help.

    I would like to know how many phonemes there are in the two Chinese syllables that are romanised (in pinyin and Wade) as 'wu' and 'yi'. I looked at the IPA transcriptions of these syllables in various books, and I found two different transcriptions: (1) /u:/ and /i:/ (or /u/ and /i/) (e.g., Li, C.N. & Thompson, S.A., 1981, Mandarin Chinese; Huang, R., 1969, Mandarin Pronunciation); (2) /wu/ and /ji/ (e.g., Duanmu, S., 2001, The Phonology of Standard Chinese; Goh, Y.-S., 1997, The Segmental Phonology of Beijing Mandarin).

    So, these are my questions: (1) Do these syllables consist of a vowel or an approximant + vowel? (2) How many phonemes can one hear in these spoken syllables? (3) Which of these IPA transcriptions is most widely used at present?

    Thank you very much for any help! (I will post a summary if I get replies.)

    Benedetta Bassetti