Areal Linguistics & Chinese

[Scott DeLancey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Chinese can be considered part of the mainland Southeast Asian
linguistic area, and shares a tremendous number of areal traits
with Tai (Kadai), Hmong-Mien, and Mon-Khmer.  Looking at that
would be a pretty easy project, though tricky without the right
library resources.
 
Looking at the languages to the north is another problem altogether.
I'm not aware of any reason at all to think that there has been any
significant influence of Altaic languages on Chinese as a whole, and that
seems like a pretty hopeless topic.  Mantaro Hashimoto used to argue that
some of the differences between Mandarin and the other Chinese
languages--reduced tone inventory, atonal unstressed syllables, greater
degree of agglutination, etc.--represented Altaic influence, and there
might possibly be a thesis topic there.  I don't know of any literature on
the topic, though, except a few papers by Hashimoto; those I'm aware of
appeared in pretty obscure places (like the occasional paper series
_Computational Analyses of Asian & African Languages_ from the Institute
for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa in Tokyo; he
also gave some papers on this at the annual Sino-Tibetan Conference
which may or may not have ever been published).  Mantaro passed away
a few years ago, so I'm not sure how one could go about trying to track
down any of this work.
 
Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
 
delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html
 
 
 
On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, Lyle Campbell wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>         I'm writing to ask if for help for a student of mine with thesis
> research she wants to undertake.  She is Sanja Brankof, an exceptional
> student (native speaker of Serbian and Hungarian, nearly native English,
> excellent Russian [her home language with her husband], and excellent
> Chinese -- she taught English and Linguistics in China (PR) for seven
> years, has a degree in Chinese linguistics and another in regular
> linguistics).  She wants to explore possible areal linguistic traits
> involving Chinese and its neighbors (especially northern ones).  Since our
> library is so limited, I'd like to ask for help with the following.
> (1) Do you think the project is viable?  (Discovering areal traits,
> defining the linguistic area and the nature of the diffusion in it).  Do
> you have any advice for what to do, not do?
> (2) Do you know of relevant bibliography which addresses diffusion among
> Chinese and any of its neighbors, especially northern ones?
> (3) What general advice do you have for Sanja concerning where she may find
> useful information on the structure of the languages for which we have less
> material available here:  Manchu, Tungusic, Gilyak (Nivkh), Mongolian
> (Buriat, etc.), Turkic (especially Uighur, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Uzbek, Tatar,
> others in contact with Chinese), Bao(an), and other relevant ones.  (We
> have pretty good materials on Japanese, Korean, and Ainu, but anything
> especially relevant here, too, would be valuable to hear about.)
> (4) If you has written any papers yourself that might be relevant, could
> you send a copy?
>         With many thanks in advance and with best wishes, Lyle
>
>
>
> Dr. Lyle Campbell (Professor)
> Dept. of Linguistics
> University of Canterbury
> Private Bag 4800
> Christchurch, New Zealand
> Fax:   64-3-364-2969
> Phone: 64-3-364-2242
>