Monthly Archives: February 2016

CHILL! Lectures on 2 and 10 March

CHILL!

Chinese Linguistics in Leiden

Upcoming talks: on 2 and 10 March

 

Wednesday 2 March 2016, 15:15-16:30, De Vrieshof 1/001:

Yang Yang (Leiden):

On the syntax-prosody interface of wh-indeterminates in Mandarin”

 

Thursday 10 March 2016, 15:15-16:30, Van Eyckhof 2/003:

Wei-tien Dylan Tsai (Tsing Hua University, Hsin-chu, Taiwan):

“Operator binding and the syntax of analyticity”

 

Abstracts:

Yang Yang (Wednesday 2 March):

In Mandarin wh-words can have an interrogative and a non-interrogative interpretation. They are “wh-indeterminates” which lack inherent quantificational force. Aside from licensers such as negative polarity licensers, wh-existential readings can also be licensed by the presence of dianr “a little bit” among others. The goal of this study is, first, to find out whether wh-questions and wh-existentials differ prosodically before the wh-word, and, secondly, to see what implications we can get for the syntax-prosody interface. In this talk, I will report on a production experiment and discuss the results.

 

Tsai Wei-tien (Thursday 10 March):

In this talk, we entertain the possibility that peripheral features play a crucial role in the formation of the upper layer of a sentence, which can be checked by either external Merge or internal Merge (i.e., Move) according to the parameter-settings of individual languages. Along this line, topic prominence is regarded as the result of peripheral feature checking, and the null topic hypothesis à la Huang (1984) is reinvented as a null operator merger to fulfill interface economy in the left periphery. In this regard, Chinese provides substantial evidence from obligatory topicalization in outer affectives, evaluatives, and refutory wh-constructions, which applies only when the licensing from a D(efiniteness)-operator is blocked. As we will see, the idea extends naturally to the issues concerning pro-drop and bare nominals in general.

 

The rest of the Spring Program (all on Wednesdays 15:15-16:30, De Vrieshof 1/1, Leiden)

23 March 2016: Lin Jing (UvA): “Non-referentiality in child Mandarin”

6 April 2016: Zou Ting (Leiden): “Processing of lexical tones by Dutch learners of Mandarin”

20 April 2016: Wu Juan (Leiden): “Contact-Induced Grammatical Creations: Through the Lens of Chinese Buddhist Translations”

4 May 2016: Hu Han (Leiden): “A Sociolinguistic Study on Rhoticity in Beijing Mandarin”

18 May 2016: Wang Man (Leiden): “Experimental approach to language production of Mandarin Chinese”

 

 

save the date: 20 April lecture by Bruce Jacobs at Leiden Uni

Bruce Jacobs (Monash University, Australia), “Reconsidering and Re-Framing Taiwan and its History: Aborigines, Colonial Rulers and Democratization”.

Date and time 20 April 2016 15.15-1.00

Location: Lipsius 308

Announcing CHILL: Chinese Linguistics in Leiden

 

CHILL!

Chinese Linguistics in Leiden

 

Programme for Spring 2016

 

All lectures Wednesdays 15:15-16:30, De Vrieshof 1/1, unless indicated otherwise

All lectures in English, unless indicated otherwise

 

10 February 2016 (in Chinese)

沈    阳(南京大学/北京大学):

命题否定和反向赋值

——试析 “才” 字句和 “就” 字句的意义对立和意义反转现象

 

提 要:本文主要讨论“才”字句和“就”字句的“意义对立”和“意义反转”现象。本文认为,“才、就”句表示的“早—晚、多—少、大—小”等广义数量意义,并不是副词“才、就”各自的意义,不是“才”字句或“就”字句各自的意义,也不仅是主观认知或百科知识赋予词语和句子的意义。本文假设,包含“数量”变项的“才、就”句是对应性命题,副词“才、就”都引出对其中一侧命题的否定,即“单侧命题否定”,只是对相应的否定项做相反的两极赋值,即“交叉反向赋值”。这些因素决定“才”字句和“就”字句表达哪种意义。本项研究表明,内部命题否定和外部参照赋值的相互作用是一种有别于“预设、蕴含”的特殊语法和语用机制。

 

 

Other dates and speakers in this series:

2 March 2016: YANG Yang (Leiden)

10 March 2016 [Thursday!!]: Wei-tien Dylan Tsai (Tsing Hua University, Hsin-chu, Taiwan)

23 March 2016: LIN Jing (UvA)

6 April: ZOU Ting (Leiden)

20 April 2016: WU Juan (Leiden)

4 May 2016: HU Han (Leiden)

18 May 2016: t.b.a.

 

More information to follow soon!