A Grammar of Iranian Azari

including comparisons with Persian
Yavar Dehghani


This study intends to develop a grammar of Iranian Azari which is spoken mainly in the north western parts of Iran: it consists of phonology, morphology, and the syntax of simple and complex clauses. Since Persian has a prominent influence on this language, the phonology, morphology and syntax of borrowed words are also discussed and when appropriate, the constructions in the language are compared to that of Persian.

Table of Contents: Chapter 1 contains a description of the situation of the language, the language family, the speakers, informants, different dialects, and previous works on the language. Chapter 2 introduces the phonological system of Azari, which includes the discussion of the phonemic inventory, phonological processes, including vowel harmony with an attempt to explain it based on autosegmental theory. Chapter 3 deals with the morphology of the language, trying to distinguish the derivational and inflectional suffixes, and discussing the underlying forms of inflectional suffixes. In this chapter, compounding and reduplication are also discussed. Chapter 4 discusses the syntax of simple clauses including the case system, constituent order, imperatives, copular, interrogative, and passive constructions. In this chapter, the distinction between complements and adjuncts is explored. At the end of this chapter, morphosyntactic borrowings from Persian are discussed. Chapter 5 illustrates the syntax of complex clauses including causative constructions, complement clauses, relative clauses and adverbial clauses. Azari minimal pairs and texts are provided in the Appendix.

LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 30. 280pp. 2000.

ISBN 9783895869914 (print).

ISBN 9783862900015 (e-book, graphic pdf).

Shanghai Tonetics

Sean Xiaonong Zhu
Australian National University

This study presents the first multi-speaker acoustic investigation into the citation tones on monosyllables (Chapters 4 to 8) and the sandhi tones on disyllables (Chapter 10) in Shanghai Chinese. It shows that using many speakers is necessary not only for phonetics, but also phonology.

Both citation and disyllabic tones are described in terms of the following dimensions: raw duration, normalised duration, raw fundamental frequency, and normalised fundamental frequency. Citation tones are also described in raw intensity and normalised intensity.

The acoustic data collected from many speakers show, among other thing, a great amount of between-speaker variations. To factor out these variations, various normalisation methods for fundamental frequency, intensity and duration are explored, and an appropriate one is developed. Its superiority to the existing ones is demonstrated. It is shown that highly constant patterns underlie the very considerable surface variations. Only after these variations have been substantially reduced, can a tonetic model be proposed in order to sufficiently characterise the tones in a linguistic variety and, hopefully, to make between-variety comparison.

To account for the between-tone fundamental frequency variations in disyllabic tone sandhi (Chapter 10), a coordinate shift procedure is developed and four phonetic realisation rules are formulised. These reveal the underlying uniformity and simplicity of complicated surface manifestations. In addition, some phonological issues are discussed, especially the word geometry suggested for Shanghai phonology (Chapter 2), and the relationship between phonetics and phonology (Chapter 11).

ISBN 9783895865848. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 32. 200pp. 1999.

The Old Sirinek Language

Texts, Lexicon, Grammatical Notes

Nikolai Vakhtin
Russian Academy of Sciences

This book deals with one of the most mysterious languages of the Far North of Russia - the so-called Old Sirinek Language (OSL, self-designation of the speakers uqeghllistun). The language is part of the Eskimo family; however, its place in the family is unclear. According to some theories, this language is the last survival of a third group of Eskimo languages alongside Yupik and Inuit. Although OSL speakers were located in eastern Chukotka, in the same area as Siberian Yupik speakers, and fused with the latter to a high extent, the OSL retained deep structural, phonological, and lexical distinctions from all Yupik languages.

In 1895 the language had 79 speakers, in 1964 it had approximately 30 speakers, and in 1988-1990 there remained only four people who still could speak it. The last speaker, Valentina Wye, the person whose language skills and patient efforts to share them made this book possible, died in 1997.

The book contains practically everything collected on OSL by several Russian scholars - Ekaterina Rubtsova, Georgii Menovschikov, Nina Emelianova and Nikolai Vakhtin - during the 50 years from the 1940s to the 1990s, with small additions of data collected by other people. It consists of four main parts:

(1) Introduction, in which the history of OSL description is outlined, its genetic affiliation with other Eskimo languages is discussed, and a brief comparison with Siberian Yupik Eskimo is given; (2) the main part of the book, giving folklore and other narrative texts in OSL with Russian interlinear translation and, for some texts, parallels from Siberian Yupik Eskimo language; (3) a small section presenting grammatical data on the language; and (4) a supplement where lexical data are presented as materials for a dictionary, ca. 2500 entries.[written in Russian]

ISBN 9783895869518. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 33. 600pp. 2000.

Contact-induced Perspectives in Uralic Linguistics

Ago Künnap
University of Tartu

The author of the book would make an attempt to outline a few features of a recent significant paradigm change in the Uralic (Finno-Ugric and Samoyed) linguistics. The main factor of linguistic processes is supposed to be language contacts, not so much a spontaneous change of languages, although the latter should also be borne in mind. The concept of linguistic affinity has also been subjected to criticism. The common features of Uralic languages developed thanks to various contacts among different languages whereby a language of the lingua franca type could operate as an intermediary.

Thus any Uralic language could always differ from other languages of this group, partly retaining its origin from source language(s), unknown us to date. Later on it could also, additionally, become more similar to other Uralic languages thanks to language contacts or, on the other hand, it could become more different as a result of contacts with others than Uralic languages. The role of a language prestige in the process of language changes through history is being emphasized at present.

The similarities between Finnic-Lapp and Samoyed languages have earlier been regarded as a result of a better survival of the Proto-Uralic heritage at the extreme peripheries of the expansive zone of occurance of Uralic languages. But the Finnic-Lapp--Samoyed similarities may hypothetically be regarded as ontime areal-typological (contact) similarities. Northern Indo-European languages - Germanic, Baltic and Slavic - are supposed to have developed so that the speakers of Uralic language form learned to speak that of the Indo-European.

Ago Künnap is Professor of Uralic Languages of the University of Tartu.

ISBN 9783895869648. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 39. 2000.

The Decline of the General Hakka Accent in Hong Kong

A Comparison of "Old-Style" and "New-Style" as spoken by the indigenous inhabitants of Hong Kong
Chunfat Lau
HongKong Polytechnic University

This thesis is a field work collection of the existing variety of Hakka dialect spoken by the indigenous population of Hong Kong and a comparison of the Old- and New-Style. The comparison enables us to see how the Cantonese dialect has affected its phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Hakka was widely spoken in the rural area of Hong Kong before the city developed into a metropolis after the seventies. In the last 50 years, Hong Kong emerged as a metropolis with Cantonese dominating the school, the media and later also the Government. Hakka is now restricted to remote settlements, old people and only in the family or village domain. Therefore, this is the last minute to catch a picture of the vanishing Hakka dialect in Hong Kong.

The author's analysis shows that Hakka as spoken in Hong Kong is strongly affected by Cantonese, and almost every Hakka speaker is subject to with different degree of Cantonese influence. This is an interesting picture of a vanishing dialect, so far unreported, not at least with such a breadth and depth. It serves as a record of how a weaker language confronting a stronger language dies out in a matter of two generations.

ISBN 9783895866777. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 40. 272pp. 2000.

The Prosodic Syntax of Chinese

Shengli Feng
University of Kansas

In linguistics, it has been commonly assumed that syntax can exert influence on prosody, but the opposite direction, prosody influences syntax, is much less widely recognized. The present manuscript argues for a bidirectional interaction between prosody and syntax: Syntax governs prosody and prosody also constrains syntax, based on data from Chinese. For example, a classical problem in Chinese syntax is this: only one constituent is, in general, allowed after the main verb. However, if the object is a destressed element (a pronoun, for example), two constituents can legitimately occur after the verb. This pattern is explained by proposing a prosodic feature assignment on elementary trees in the Tree Adjoining Grammar notation. The manuscript is the first work that a system of prosodically constrained syntax is proposed in the literature, and it will create a sub-field of linguistics in the study of human languages.

Table of Contents:

Preface
Chapter 1. Phrase Structure
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Problems of Phrase Structure in Chinese
1.2.1 Huang's Account
1.2.2 Li's Account
1.2.3 Huang's Revised Theory
1.3 The Prosodic Hypothesis
1.4 Accent, Stress and Focus
1.4.1 Accent and Stress
1.4.2 Stress and Focus
1.5 Summary
Chapter 2. Prosodic Syntax
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Phrasal Prosody in Mandarin Chinese
2.2.1. Chao's Last-Being-Strongest Generalization
2.2.2. Tang's From-Light-to-Heavy Principle
2.2.3. The Nuclear Stress Rule in Chinese
2.3 Theoretical Framework
2.3.1. TAG Formalism
2.3.2. Unification-Based TAG ----- Top and Bottom Feature Structures
2.3.3. Prosodic Feature Structures
2.3.3.1. VP Adjunction
2.3.3.2. NP Adjunction
2.3.3.3. Simple Sentences
2.4 Last-VP Syntax in Mandarin Chinese
2.4.1. Overview
2.4.2. The Problem of D/F Adjuncts
2.4.3. Prosodic Explanation
2.4.3.1. [V-NP-D/FP]
2.4.3.2. Structure of [V Pronoun D/FP]
2.4.3.3. [V __ D/FP]
2.4.3.4. Intransitive V with D/FP
2.5 The ba-Construction
2.5.1. Bare Verb Effect
2.5.2. Previous Accounts
2.5.2.1. Chao's Anticlimax
2.5.2.2. Liu's Perfectivity
2.5.3. A Prosodic Account
2.5.3.1 Basic Structure
2.5.3.2 Questions Regarding the Prosodic Hypothesis
2.5.3.3 A Branching V' Node
2.5.3.4 [Ba-NP V-XP] Structures
2.5.3.5 [BaP Adv V] Structures
2.5.3.6 Syllabic Branching Node V
2.5.3.7 The Acceptability of Disyllabic Verbs
2.5.3.8 Evidence for Weak and Strong Disyllabic Forms
2.5.3.9 An Analysis for Unacceptable Disyllabic Forms
2.5.3.10 [Ba-NP Zemeyang]
2.5.4. Summary
Chapter 3. Prosodic Word
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Word-stress in Mandarin Chinese
3.2.1. The Controversy over Compound Stress
3.2.2. The Underlying Pattern of Compound Stress
3.2.3. Tone Quality
3.2.4. Weakening
3.2.5. Summary
3.3. The Phrasal Origin of Chinese Compounds
3.4. The Lexicalized TAG System
3.4.1. An Introduction to Lexicalized TAG
3.4.2. Unified Stress Assignment on Elementary Trees
3.4.3. The Idiomatic Character of Chinese Compounds
3.4.4. Problems with Our Syntactic Account
3.5. Prosodic Morphology and Word Formation in Chinese
3.5.1. An Introduction to Prosodic Morphology
3.5.2. The Foot Formation Rule
3.5.3. Monosyllabicity
3.5.4. The Trisyllabic Foot -- the Mending Device
3.6. Prosodic Words and Compounding
3.6.1. The Constraint [M]=[s] and ALIGN:[ ]Compound=[ ]PrWd
3.6.2. The Derivation of PrWd (Compounding)
3.6.3. Remaining Problems
3.6.3.1. Impossible [[ss]s]VP Compounds
3.6.3.2. Trisyllabic [s[ss]]NP Forms
3.6.3.3. [sss] Coordinating compounds
3.7. Implications and Consequences
3.7.1. The Chinese Lexicon and Dictionary
3.7.2. Interaction between the Monosyllabic Axiom and the Foot Formation Rule

ISBN 9783895863691. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 44. 141pp. 2002.