Language Change and Typology

This week’s readings study “word” from three different perspectives: word structure, ambiguity and habitual patterns.

Haspelmath uses cross linguistic data to introduce basic concepts of morphology: lexeme versus word-form, paradigm versus word family, inflection versus derivation, morphemes versus allomorphs, affix, base and roots.  He also introduces morphological trees to analyze the hierarchical structure of endocentric compounds with a head-dependent structure and derived lexemes.

Atkins & Levin (1995) proposes that the semantic concept of internal versus external causation can explain why the seven “shake” verbs differ syntactically despite of their semantical similarities. This article suggests that this type of theoretical infrastructure can help lexicographers to analyze the corpora and account for random variations in usage.

Slobin (2004) proposes a revision to Talmy’s typology of verb-framed and satellite-framed languages that a third type, equipollently-framed languages, should be added, based on different expressions of motion events in a variety of languages. He also suggests that several different sorts of factors, such as lexical, morphosyntactic, and cultural factors, must be considered and audio and video data are needed in order to carry the work forward.

These articles spark my interest in studying the change of Chinese morphology and semantics. In the past, Chinese only had a few derivation-like affixes. Take the suffix “zi 子” as an example. “zi3子” was once a free word meaning “son” or “child” in Classical Chinese. Later, we can see “zi 子” in the following words: “tu-zi 兔子 rabbit”, “ya-zi 鸭子 duck”, “zhuo-zi 桌子 table”, “fang-zi 房子 house”, etc. It became a morpheme with a neutral tone but without an easily definable meaning.  Along with the contact between Chinese and English, Chinese started to produce more and more suffixes. For instance, “hua4 化 change”: “xi1fang1hua4 西方化 westernization”, “xian4dai4hua4 现代化 modernization”, “ji1xie4hua4 机械化 mechanization”; “xing4 性 nature”: “yan2zhong4xing4 严重性 seriousness”, “zhong4yao4xing4 重要性 importance”, “neng2chan3xing4 能产性 productivity”; “du 度 degree”: “tou4ming2du4 透明度 transparency”, “neng2jian4du4 能见度 visibility”. These new suffixes can attach to many words and possess clear meanings and the new words are very formal in Modern Chinese. According to some Chinese linguists’ research, the written Modern Chinese was heavily influenced by English. Therefore, we might inference that these new suffixes were produce under the influence of English. Of course, substantial evidence is needed to prove this statement.

In addition, an intransitive verb can take an object in Classical Chinese. For example, “jing1tian1di4, qi4gui3shen2 惊天地，泣鬼神 shock the sky and the earth, make gods and devils cry”. “qi4 泣 cry” is an intransitive verb with internal causation according to Atkins and Levin’s analysis. But in Classical Chinese, it still could take an object and become a transitive verb in this context. Why? What’s more, this phenomenon disappears in Modern Chinese. I wonder what caused this change. Since the language keeps changing, I am also curious whether typology linguists consider the change of a specific language or not.