This entry provides a concise overview of the history of Chinese linguistics in the Eastern Europ... more This entry provides a concise overview of the history of Chinese linguistics in the Eastern European region between Germany and the former Soviet Union. Research on the Chinese language (by which term we mean here the totality of the geographical and historical varieties of the language of the Hàn ethnic majority of China) in the Eastern half of Europe looks back to some two hundred years of scholarship. It has two major traditions, linked to the two political and cultural superpowers of the region in this period: Germany and Russia-treated in separate entries. Besides, there has been significant work going on since the middle of the 20th century in centers geographically located in between those two regional superpowers, especially in Poland, Czechoslovakia and its successor states, Hungary, and Romania. Interestingly, though, sinological scholarship in these centers was influenced much more by the achievements and personalities of French sinology than by the German or Russian tradition.
The focus of this study is the so-called verb-copy construction(s) of Mandarin Chinese, where two... more The focus of this study is the so-called verb-copy construction(s) of Mandarin Chinese, where two (or even more) copies of the same verb surface in a single clause, without any semantic consequence of this multiplicity. This family of constructions has received various analyses in
The goal of this paper is to provide the linguistic groundwork for future advances towards more e... more The goal of this paper is to provide the linguistic groundwork for future advances towards more effective ways of teaching the pronunciation of MandarinChinese to Hungarian learners. It builds on earlier work by the authors on this subject, expanding their coverage, and sharpening the analyses therein. After a brief general introduction of the two languages, the paper offers an in-depth comparison between their segmental and suprasegmental phonetic systems, systematically going through the major subsystems, pointing out system-level similarities and differences. The paper then continues with an evaluation of the likelihood of the identified differences causing difficulties for learners of Mandarin with Hungarian as their native language both in learning and in communicative efficiency, concluding that suprasegmental features (tone, intonation) are the areas with the greatest discrepancy between the severity of the problem and the awareness of teachers – largely due to the cognitive ...
The Mandarin quantificational adverb dou 都 is well-known for its versatility: it occurs in a wide... more The Mandarin quantificational adverb dou 都 is well-known for its versatility: it occurs in a wide variety of constructions, and has a wide range of s emantic and pragmatic contributions to the meaning of the clause it occurs in, ranging from un iversal quantification, through even- type focusing, to clearly pragmatic-attitudinal functions. This pa per targets a relatively narrow segment of this wid e spectrum: those use of dou where (i) it is used with universal quantification al force, and/but (ii) the linguistic expression often associated with its qua ntification domain in the literature appears to its right in the clause, as opposed to the much more usual s cenario of its associate taking a position to its left . It is shown that the alleged associates to its ri ght are in fact not its true associates syntactically, at least not in the manner that its leftward associates are: (i) the ’personal pronoun’ construction in fact complies with the LC, making u se of covert elements; (i...
This paper investigates the syntactic aspects of object agreement in Hungarian, a phenomenon that... more This paper investigates the syntactic aspects of object agreement in Hungarian, a phenomenon that has not yet been given a proper analysis with full coverage of the relevant data, and attempts to provide an entirely new characterization of the factor (s) governing ...
This paper is intended to contribute to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in Hungary ... more This paper is intended to contribute to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in Hungary by filling a notable gap in the literature. There have been few studies of the specific differences between Hungarian and Chinese and none at all which apply contrastive analysis of phonetic and phonological systems for pedagogical purposes. After a brief general introduction of Hungarian and Chinese, the paper offers an in-depth comparison between the segmental and suprasegmental phonetic systems of the two languages. The comparison is divided into separate sections, each of which is further subdivided, dealing with consonants, vowels, syllable tones, syllable structure, stress and intonation. The paper continues with a discussion of which of the identified differences are likely to cause difficulties both in terms of acquisition by Hungarian learners and in terms of communicative efficiency. The two features that emerge as the most problematic are suprasegmental intonation and syllable tone. The latter, given its essential and pervasive semantic value, is proposed as the feature that deserves the most attention of teachers and learners. 2 General description of Hungarian and Chinese Siptár & Törkenczy (2000: 13) describe Hungarian as "a Uralic language spoken in Central Europe". In terms of the number of speakers, it is the twelfth largest language of Europe. The majority of speakers reside in Hungary itself, but Hungarian-speaking minorities are found in the neighbouring states: Slovakia,
Bartos Huba. Daniel P. Hole : Focus and background marking in Mandarin Chinese.. In: Cahiers de l... more Bartos Huba. Daniel P. Hole : Focus and background marking in Mandarin Chinese.. In: Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale, vol. 33 2, 2004. pp. 283-295.
In two recent papers, Horvath & Siloni (HS to appear) argue for a lexical treatment of Hungar... more In two recent papers, Horvath & Siloni (HS to appear) argue for a lexical treatment of Hungarian external (- tAt ) causatives, as well as against the viability of any non-lexical treatment in general. Here I take issue with them on their conclusion, as well as their argumentation, to show that (i) several of their arguments are empirically unfounded, therefore (ii) their general conclusion is unwarranted, and in fact, (iii) the data do allow for a radically non-lexical treatment, the essentials of which are spelt out in the last part of the paper, although the primary aim here is just to show that H&S's analysis of Hungarian causatives is not the only viable one, and not superior to a syntax-based account, either.
This book (henceforth referred to by the acronym 'HLL', based on the authors' initials), publishe... more This book (henceforth referred to by the acronym 'HLL', based on the authors' initials), published in the Cambridge series devoted to the theoretically well-grounded description of the syntax of individual languages, is the first serious attempt, in English, at such a comprehensive work on Mandarin Chinese: while the linguistic community has seen various descriptive and reference grammars, these never strove to base their data-level observations consistently on a coherent theoretic framework-which is the clear intention of the current volume, even if this comes at the price of giving up somewhat on full coverage, as the Introduction openly admits it (p. 3). Instead, the authors focus on those data, constructions, and issues related to them that have received sufficient attention, and/or satisfactory analyses, in the realm of generative linguistics, in the past 30 years or so. And in fact, all three authors are, and have been for some time now, among the best-known, most central, most renowned figures of Chinese generative grammar, which immediately guarantees a certain level of quality, but also sets the readers' expectations high, at the same time. The book is organized into nine chapters, the first two of which lay the general foundations for the rest, discussing issues concerning the syntactic category system of Mandarin, and the predicate-argument relations, thereby acquainting the readers (especially those who are not well-versed in current generative theory) with many concepts and considerations that will become crucial in understanding and fully appreciating the oncoming analyses. The seven subsequent chapters then treat specific chunks of the syntax of Mandarin one by one, with particular attention devoted to those phenomena that have triggered the most heated (or most fruitful) debates within the generative literature, such as the ba-and bei-constructions, the structure of interrogatives, or the patterns of anaphora. Generally speaking, the overall structure of the book suits the chief goals well, the authors manage to keep good proportions among the topics, as well as between theory and description. If there is anything to be critical of at this general level, it is a clear sense of indecision on behalf of the authors as to how deeply they should go into explaining the underlying theory: sometimes (especially in the first half of the book) these 'background clarifications' are frequent and lengthy (occasionally to the extent that the text almost sounds like an introductory textbook in syntactic theory), while in many other cases (mostly in the second half) the delicacies of technical explanations run so wildly profound that no one without a solid basis in recent Chomskyan linguistics stands the slightest chance to be able to follow them. In other words, I would be hard-pressed to determine the real target audience of this book: for the theoretical linguist interested in Chinese, many explanatory parts are superfluous (a particularly obvious such case is the discussion of theta theory in Chapter 2), while for someone interested in Mandarin grammar, but without a firm background in generative theory, certain sections must be extremely difficult (if not outright impossible) to cope with, e.g., the discussion of beipassives (esp. 134ff.), or the treatment of the relative construction (esp. 221ff). That basically leaves us Chomskyan syntacticians with a stake in Chinese as the well-targeted readership-not a huge crowd, I am afraid. In what follows, I will treat the chapters' contents, one by one, pointing out the particular strengths and weaknesses therein. The content part of the book sets out with the groundwork of establishing the inventory of syntactic categories of Mandarin: Chapter 1 (Categories). In the domain of lexical categories, besides the obvious noun $ verb distinction, we find three issues of notable peculiarity discussed: the classification of (so-called) localizers, the question of the independent category of adjectives, and the definition of the category of prepositions in this language. Concerning localizers, one traditional debate was about the categorial unity vs. duality of monosyllabic and disyllabic localizers (e.g., N(-de) li-bian 'N (-DE) inside-side' vs. N-li 'N-inside') and another one about whether they are basically nouns or postpositions. The conclusion here is that while disyllabic ones are nouns (though on the verge of losing their nominal identity), the monosyllabic ones constitute a minor independent category of some sort: 'noun deviates'. While the arguments against them being either nouns or prepositions proper are sound, the categorization offered is really just a nicer way of saying 'we don't know', and since for expository purposes the localizers are called and labeled as 'localizers (L)' throughout the discussion, anyway, they might as well have been assigned to a genuinely independent category by this name. On the question of adjectives as an Lingua 121 (2011) 313-319
The paper treats VP-ellipsis data in Hungarian from the perspective of identity requirements betw... more The paper treats VP-ellipsis data in Hungarian from the perspective of identity requirements between the elided and the anteceding V-form. The examination of the data yields the generalization that agreement marking apparently falls under the notion of sloppy identity, while tense marking shows little variability. Nevertheless it is argued here that the licensing of ellipsis observes the strict identity requirement: elided Agr is not only recoverable from the anteceding V-form in a parallel clause, but, more locally, from the anchor of agreement (subject, object). Likewise, the ellipsis of in nitival marking can be locally licensed by relying on selectional properties. The framework of the analyses is Distributed Morphology, a late insertion theory, whereby ellipsis is regarded neither as deletion, nor as reconstruction, but as non-insertion of phonological material at the level of morphology.
The paper investigates cases of coordinate ellipsis in Hungarian, fromthe perspective of possible... more The paper investigates cases of coordinate ellipsis in Hungarian, fromthe perspective of possible differences between forward and backward ellipsis,and argues that all instances of backward ellipsis (BWE), as well as mosttypes of forward ellipsis (FWE), arise by the non-insertion of phonologicalshapes to the terminal nodes of syntactic phrase markers at the level of morphology,where vocabulary insertion takes place in a standard version of late insertiontheories: Distributed Morphology. It is shown, on the one hand, that evenin those cases of FWE where considerable lexical differences occur betweenthe ellipsis site and its parallel licensing antecedent, the device of non-insertionis often sucifient for a satisfactory account, thereby limiting the scopeof applying other, less easily constrained devices, such as anaphora interpretation,or reconstruction. On the other hand, BWE need not be analysed as the resultof a separate operation (PF deletion), either, as non-insertion has the sam...
This paper argues that subjecthood is a relevant concept in the grammar of (Mandarin) Chinese, ie... more This paper argues that subjecthood is a relevant concept in the grammar of (Mandarin) Chinese, ie, Chinese is subject-prominent as well as topic-prominent, and the most appropriate way of characterising subjects is by determining their regular structural ...
This entry provides a concise overview of the history of Chinese linguistics in the Eastern Europ... more This entry provides a concise overview of the history of Chinese linguistics in the Eastern European region between Germany and the former Soviet Union. Research on the Chinese language (by which term we mean here the totality of the geographical and historical varieties of the language of the Hàn ethnic majority of China) in the Eastern half of Europe looks back to some two hundred years of scholarship. It has two major traditions, linked to the two political and cultural superpowers of the region in this period: Germany and Russia-treated in separate entries. Besides, there has been significant work going on since the middle of the 20th century in centers geographically located in between those two regional superpowers, especially in Poland, Czechoslovakia and its successor states, Hungary, and Romania. Interestingly, though, sinological scholarship in these centers was influenced much more by the achievements and personalities of French sinology than by the German or Russian tradition.
The focus of this study is the so-called verb-copy construction(s) of Mandarin Chinese, where two... more The focus of this study is the so-called verb-copy construction(s) of Mandarin Chinese, where two (or even more) copies of the same verb surface in a single clause, without any semantic consequence of this multiplicity. This family of constructions has received various analyses in
The goal of this paper is to provide the linguistic groundwork for future advances towards more e... more The goal of this paper is to provide the linguistic groundwork for future advances towards more effective ways of teaching the pronunciation of MandarinChinese to Hungarian learners. It builds on earlier work by the authors on this subject, expanding their coverage, and sharpening the analyses therein. After a brief general introduction of the two languages, the paper offers an in-depth comparison between their segmental and suprasegmental phonetic systems, systematically going through the major subsystems, pointing out system-level similarities and differences. The paper then continues with an evaluation of the likelihood of the identified differences causing difficulties for learners of Mandarin with Hungarian as their native language both in learning and in communicative efficiency, concluding that suprasegmental features (tone, intonation) are the areas with the greatest discrepancy between the severity of the problem and the awareness of teachers – largely due to the cognitive ...
The Mandarin quantificational adverb dou 都 is well-known for its versatility: it occurs in a wide... more The Mandarin quantificational adverb dou 都 is well-known for its versatility: it occurs in a wide variety of constructions, and has a wide range of s emantic and pragmatic contributions to the meaning of the clause it occurs in, ranging from un iversal quantification, through even- type focusing, to clearly pragmatic-attitudinal functions. This pa per targets a relatively narrow segment of this wid e spectrum: those use of dou where (i) it is used with universal quantification al force, and/but (ii) the linguistic expression often associated with its qua ntification domain in the literature appears to its right in the clause, as opposed to the much more usual s cenario of its associate taking a position to its left . It is shown that the alleged associates to its ri ght are in fact not its true associates syntactically, at least not in the manner that its leftward associates are: (i) the ’personal pronoun’ construction in fact complies with the LC, making u se of covert elements; (i...
This paper investigates the syntactic aspects of object agreement in Hungarian, a phenomenon that... more This paper investigates the syntactic aspects of object agreement in Hungarian, a phenomenon that has not yet been given a proper analysis with full coverage of the relevant data, and attempts to provide an entirely new characterization of the factor (s) governing ...
This paper is intended to contribute to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in Hungary ... more This paper is intended to contribute to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in Hungary by filling a notable gap in the literature. There have been few studies of the specific differences between Hungarian and Chinese and none at all which apply contrastive analysis of phonetic and phonological systems for pedagogical purposes. After a brief general introduction of Hungarian and Chinese, the paper offers an in-depth comparison between the segmental and suprasegmental phonetic systems of the two languages. The comparison is divided into separate sections, each of which is further subdivided, dealing with consonants, vowels, syllable tones, syllable structure, stress and intonation. The paper continues with a discussion of which of the identified differences are likely to cause difficulties both in terms of acquisition by Hungarian learners and in terms of communicative efficiency. The two features that emerge as the most problematic are suprasegmental intonation and syllable tone. The latter, given its essential and pervasive semantic value, is proposed as the feature that deserves the most attention of teachers and learners. 2 General description of Hungarian and Chinese Siptár & Törkenczy (2000: 13) describe Hungarian as "a Uralic language spoken in Central Europe". In terms of the number of speakers, it is the twelfth largest language of Europe. The majority of speakers reside in Hungary itself, but Hungarian-speaking minorities are found in the neighbouring states: Slovakia,
Bartos Huba. Daniel P. Hole : Focus and background marking in Mandarin Chinese.. In: Cahiers de l... more Bartos Huba. Daniel P. Hole : Focus and background marking in Mandarin Chinese.. In: Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale, vol. 33 2, 2004. pp. 283-295.
In two recent papers, Horvath & Siloni (HS to appear) argue for a lexical treatment of Hungar... more In two recent papers, Horvath & Siloni (HS to appear) argue for a lexical treatment of Hungarian external (- tAt ) causatives, as well as against the viability of any non-lexical treatment in general. Here I take issue with them on their conclusion, as well as their argumentation, to show that (i) several of their arguments are empirically unfounded, therefore (ii) their general conclusion is unwarranted, and in fact, (iii) the data do allow for a radically non-lexical treatment, the essentials of which are spelt out in the last part of the paper, although the primary aim here is just to show that H&S's analysis of Hungarian causatives is not the only viable one, and not superior to a syntax-based account, either.
This book (henceforth referred to by the acronym 'HLL', based on the authors' initials), publishe... more This book (henceforth referred to by the acronym 'HLL', based on the authors' initials), published in the Cambridge series devoted to the theoretically well-grounded description of the syntax of individual languages, is the first serious attempt, in English, at such a comprehensive work on Mandarin Chinese: while the linguistic community has seen various descriptive and reference grammars, these never strove to base their data-level observations consistently on a coherent theoretic framework-which is the clear intention of the current volume, even if this comes at the price of giving up somewhat on full coverage, as the Introduction openly admits it (p. 3). Instead, the authors focus on those data, constructions, and issues related to them that have received sufficient attention, and/or satisfactory analyses, in the realm of generative linguistics, in the past 30 years or so. And in fact, all three authors are, and have been for some time now, among the best-known, most central, most renowned figures of Chinese generative grammar, which immediately guarantees a certain level of quality, but also sets the readers' expectations high, at the same time. The book is organized into nine chapters, the first two of which lay the general foundations for the rest, discussing issues concerning the syntactic category system of Mandarin, and the predicate-argument relations, thereby acquainting the readers (especially those who are not well-versed in current generative theory) with many concepts and considerations that will become crucial in understanding and fully appreciating the oncoming analyses. The seven subsequent chapters then treat specific chunks of the syntax of Mandarin one by one, with particular attention devoted to those phenomena that have triggered the most heated (or most fruitful) debates within the generative literature, such as the ba-and bei-constructions, the structure of interrogatives, or the patterns of anaphora. Generally speaking, the overall structure of the book suits the chief goals well, the authors manage to keep good proportions among the topics, as well as between theory and description. If there is anything to be critical of at this general level, it is a clear sense of indecision on behalf of the authors as to how deeply they should go into explaining the underlying theory: sometimes (especially in the first half of the book) these 'background clarifications' are frequent and lengthy (occasionally to the extent that the text almost sounds like an introductory textbook in syntactic theory), while in many other cases (mostly in the second half) the delicacies of technical explanations run so wildly profound that no one without a solid basis in recent Chomskyan linguistics stands the slightest chance to be able to follow them. In other words, I would be hard-pressed to determine the real target audience of this book: for the theoretical linguist interested in Chinese, many explanatory parts are superfluous (a particularly obvious such case is the discussion of theta theory in Chapter 2), while for someone interested in Mandarin grammar, but without a firm background in generative theory, certain sections must be extremely difficult (if not outright impossible) to cope with, e.g., the discussion of beipassives (esp. 134ff.), or the treatment of the relative construction (esp. 221ff). That basically leaves us Chomskyan syntacticians with a stake in Chinese as the well-targeted readership-not a huge crowd, I am afraid. In what follows, I will treat the chapters' contents, one by one, pointing out the particular strengths and weaknesses therein. The content part of the book sets out with the groundwork of establishing the inventory of syntactic categories of Mandarin: Chapter 1 (Categories). In the domain of lexical categories, besides the obvious noun $ verb distinction, we find three issues of notable peculiarity discussed: the classification of (so-called) localizers, the question of the independent category of adjectives, and the definition of the category of prepositions in this language. Concerning localizers, one traditional debate was about the categorial unity vs. duality of monosyllabic and disyllabic localizers (e.g., N(-de) li-bian 'N (-DE) inside-side' vs. N-li 'N-inside') and another one about whether they are basically nouns or postpositions. The conclusion here is that while disyllabic ones are nouns (though on the verge of losing their nominal identity), the monosyllabic ones constitute a minor independent category of some sort: 'noun deviates'. While the arguments against them being either nouns or prepositions proper are sound, the categorization offered is really just a nicer way of saying 'we don't know', and since for expository purposes the localizers are called and labeled as 'localizers (L)' throughout the discussion, anyway, they might as well have been assigned to a genuinely independent category by this name. On the question of adjectives as an Lingua 121 (2011) 313-319
The paper treats VP-ellipsis data in Hungarian from the perspective of identity requirements betw... more The paper treats VP-ellipsis data in Hungarian from the perspective of identity requirements between the elided and the anteceding V-form. The examination of the data yields the generalization that agreement marking apparently falls under the notion of sloppy identity, while tense marking shows little variability. Nevertheless it is argued here that the licensing of ellipsis observes the strict identity requirement: elided Agr is not only recoverable from the anteceding V-form in a parallel clause, but, more locally, from the anchor of agreement (subject, object). Likewise, the ellipsis of in nitival marking can be locally licensed by relying on selectional properties. The framework of the analyses is Distributed Morphology, a late insertion theory, whereby ellipsis is regarded neither as deletion, nor as reconstruction, but as non-insertion of phonological material at the level of morphology.
The paper investigates cases of coordinate ellipsis in Hungarian, fromthe perspective of possible... more The paper investigates cases of coordinate ellipsis in Hungarian, fromthe perspective of possible differences between forward and backward ellipsis,and argues that all instances of backward ellipsis (BWE), as well as mosttypes of forward ellipsis (FWE), arise by the non-insertion of phonologicalshapes to the terminal nodes of syntactic phrase markers at the level of morphology,where vocabulary insertion takes place in a standard version of late insertiontheories: Distributed Morphology. It is shown, on the one hand, that evenin those cases of FWE where considerable lexical differences occur betweenthe ellipsis site and its parallel licensing antecedent, the device of non-insertionis often sucifient for a satisfactory account, thereby limiting the scopeof applying other, less easily constrained devices, such as anaphora interpretation,or reconstruction. On the other hand, BWE need not be analysed as the resultof a separate operation (PF deletion), either, as non-insertion has the sam...
This paper argues that subjecthood is a relevant concept in the grammar of (Mandarin) Chinese, ie... more This paper argues that subjecthood is a relevant concept in the grammar of (Mandarin) Chinese, ie, Chinese is subject-prominent as well as topic-prominent, and the most appropriate way of characterising subjects is by determining their regular structural ...
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