 Posted - 23/05/2001 : 10:03:55
Department of Chinese, Translation & Linguistics
&
Institute of Chinese Linguistics
Summer Seminar Series on Chinese Linguistics (3)
The compound and complex sentences in Chinese: punctuation as a means of parsing
By: Professor Tsai-Fa Cheng
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Time: 2:30 - 4:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, 13 June 2001
Venue: Lecture Room P4801, Academic Building, CityU (To be confirmed)
Abstract: I would take a closer look of the compound and complex classical
and modern Chinese sentences, and argue that punctuations can be used to mark
a certain Chinese intonations, which in many other languages are accompanied
by connectives.
The compound and complex sentences are less studied in general. In English,
this can be justified, because these types of sentences are marked with
connectives; while in Chinese, since connetives are not necessarily used,
one can not see the whole picture of the structures of compound and complex
sentences by studying the simple and embedded sentences alone. On top of
this,
the current punctuation system fails to take into accounnt the "missing
links" which is discernable only in intonation. Linguistically this makes
many syntactic problems the subject matters of discourse analysis. This also
results in a general misconception that Chinese sentences are either short
or simply the juxtaposition of long ones. In teaching Chinese, modern and
classical Chinese alike, this simplified view of Chinese syntactic structures
has created a serious problem. For instence, students do well in short
sentences, but have trouble in speaking or reading long ones.
Although linguists have studied compound and complex sentences under the
labels of 連動、 遞繫、 緊縮, in general practice, against the native feeling,
a sentence of these types is usually seen as the juxtaposition of short
sentences, in which all the sentences except for the first one have a zero
subject. A systematic marking to denote the "missing links" in structures
by means of punctuation is definitely desirable.
About the Speaker: Tsai-Fa Cheng, a native of Xinzhu, Taiwan, received his
BA and MA degrees, majoring in Chinese literature and Chinese linguistics,
from Taiwan University, and Ph.D. majoring in linguistics from University
of Wisconsin - Madison. He has been with both the Dept. of East Asian
Lnaguages
and literature and the Religious Studies Program of UW-Madison, teaching
mainly Chinese historical linguistics and philosophical classics such as the
Yi-Jing. He also serves as -Y￥oa‥s-u in both the Institute of History and
Philology and the Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei. His major
area of studies is Chinese historical phonology. He has a book, Ancient
Chinese and Early Mandarin, published by the Journal of Chinese Linguistics,
Berkeley. He is interested in applying his study of historical phonology to
the fields of dilectology, historical syntax, and etymology, and applying
his linguistic study to the Chinese classical studies. In the latter area,
he has recently finished the first draft of a translation of the original
texts of the Yi-Jing. He is also interested in classical poetry. In this
area,
he is working on a book on the formation and development of the metrics of
regulated poems.
Enquiries: 2788-8705
___________________ All are welcome! ____________________
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