China Seminar

Prosody and its syntactic effects in Chinese

by Feng Shengli

Chinese University of Hong Kong

This talk discusses prosody and its effects on Chinese grammar. It attempts to show that prosody (both monosyllabic foot and disyllabic foot) may be the key to understanding Chinese grammar in the past and the present with respect to not only phonology but also morphology and syntax.

Issues to be discussed (more or less elaborately) foot structure in Old Chinese and the parallel developments of the tonal system; disyllabic foot; sentential final particles; as well as other features which have been claimed to have played a role in the typological change Chinese is supposed to have undergone from syntheticity to analyticity.

date: Wednesday 2 October 2013

time: 15:15-17:00

place: Arsenaal, room 001

This is the second talk in the China seminar series 2013-2014.

Information about the talks in the months to come will follow soon.