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Modern Chinese and Linguistic Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Paul Kratochvil
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Extract

It has been observed on many occasions that Chinese changed greatly since the turn of the century, especially during the last 30 years, perhaps more rapidly and more profoundly than any other one of the principal world languages. The changes led to the birth of a branch of Chinese linguistics specifically concerned with them, and beside numerous textbooks and dictionaries, there appeared a voluminous series of studies dedicated exclusively to their description. Chi Wen-shun, the compiler of one of the dictionaries, noted the feeling of having become illiterate on the part of an educated Chinese émigré reading the People's Daily, while others, including the present author, have gone so far as to speak of Chinese as a divided language, in a sense similar to that of a divided country in the political sphere.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 92 , December 1982, pp. 687 - 695
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1982

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References

1. Studies in Chinese Communist Terminology published since 1956 by the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, California.

2. See Chi, Wen-shun, Chinese-English Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (Berkeley, 1977), p. xi.Google Scholar

3. See Kratochvil, P., “The norm and divided Chinese,” Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, Vol. VIII (1973), No. 2, pp. 62–69.Google Scholar

4. For a presentation of the basic concepts in this respect see Hoenigswald, H. M., Language Change and Linguistic Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960).Google Scholar

5. By extension it also became a popular word, at one time, for “postage stamp” when the first stamps carrying the device were circulated in China, and, more allegorically, for “railway engine” at the turn of the century. For an account of this word see Chao, Y. R., A Grammar of Spoken Chinese (Berkeley, 1968), p. 382.Google Scholar

6. This statement is not intended as a contribution to the recent discussion about the or der of phonological rules involved in linguistic change and the speed with which linguistic change is executed (see Chen, M. Y. and Wang, W. S-Y., “Sound change: actuation and implementation,” Language, Vol. 51 (1975), pp. 255–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Chen, M. Y., “Relative chronology: three methods of reconstruction,” Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 12 (1976), No. 2, pp. 209–58).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Whatever the phonological case may be, the build up of the conditions leading to the execution of linguistic change requires much more time than the introduction of an amorphous change.

7. See Liang, J., “Lexical changes in modern Chinese,” Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, Vol. XI (1976), No. 2, pp. 88–95.Google Scholar

8. See Chi, Li, New Features in Chinese Grammatical Usage, No. 9Google Scholar, Studies in Chinese Communist Terminology (Berkeley, 1962).Google Scholar

9. See Chi, Li, op. cit. pp. 42 et seq.Google Scholar

10. See, for example, Labov, W., “The social origins of sound change” in Labov, W. (ed.), Locating Language in Time and Space (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

11. In Steiner, G., After Babel (London, 1975).Google ScholarPubMed

12. For a discussion of the whole process see Kratochvil, P., “Stress shift mechanism and its role in Peking dialect,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 8 (1974), No. 4, pp. 433–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is a type of disyllabic words in Modern Standard Chinese the shape of which conforms to Stage 4, although their second components are not suffixes. They are invariably words belonging to the most highly recurrent part of Modern Standard Chinese lexis, either very old Chinese words, such as dòufu (“bean-curd”) “bean curd” and ylshang (“clothing-clothing”) “clothes,” or old words of uncertain origin, possibly early foreign borrowings, e.g. bōli (“glass”), or reduplications like gége (“elder brother”). Words of this type appeared in Chinese before the system of affixation had fully developed, and they went through Stage 3 to Stage 4 without forming groups sharing the second component. The general condition for their shift of stress was probably mere high recurrence.

13. See Kennedy, G. A., “Metrical irregularity in the Shih Ching,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 60 (1939), pp. 284–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Kratochvil, P., “Traditions in Chinese linguistics: fact or fiction?”, Cahiers de Linguistique, Asie Orientale, No. 1 (1977), pp. 17–30Google Scholar, for a discussion of early fusions and related matters.

14. See Chi, Li, op. cit. pp. 9–27.Google Scholar

15. See Milsky, C., Préparation de la Réforme de l'Écriture en République Populaire de Chine, 1949–1954 (The Hague, 1974), pp. 211 et seq.Google Scholar

16. See Chi, Li, op. cit. p. 21.Google Scholar

17. This and other cases are noted in Chén Zhìwén, “Guānyú Běijīnghuà Iĭ érhuà de láiyuán” (“On the sources of er-suffixation in Peking dialect”), Zhōngguó Yŭwén, No. 5 (1965), p. 370.Google Scholar