LCNC

This project proposes to carry out a systematic and comprehensive study of contact-induced grammatical change during the history of Chinese, through investigating the abundance of available Chinese linguistic data. The Chinese language has undergone prolonged contact between languages of very different grammatical types throughout its history with these contacts impacting on Chinese linguistic development both synchronically and diachronically. Consequently, any study of contact involving Chinese cannot fail to be significant and valuable. During the past few decades, a significant body of literature has been published on the subject of language contact and its influence on language change, but it has primarily focused on inflectional languages and agglutinative languages, as opposed to isolating or analytic languages such as Chinese. Three periods will be covered: (i) Altaic-Mongolian influence [1000-1400]; (ii) Altaic-Manchu influence [1700-1900]; (iii) Altaic influence on Northwestern (Chinese dialects and/or) Sinitic languages (Modern period). The contact situations during these three periods are very different in terms of contact intensity, language policies, and other social and political factors. The aim of this project is to revisit and contribute some relevant solutions to some of the questions and issues raised by a good number of scholars with respect to the differences between Northern and Southern Chinese, especially the geographical distribution of various typological features in both varieties. Likewise, we will contribute to a better understanding of the areal diffusion and the typological characteristics that distinguish Northern Chinese languages from the Sinitic languages of Southern, Central and South-eastern China. Furthermore, this study will examine the nature of the languages in Yuan baihua and Northwestern Sinitic languages since some scholars have considered them as good examples of ‘creoles’ or ‘pidgins’ and perhaps even ‘mixed languages’ or ‘intertwining languages’. Thus, one of the main objectives of this project is also to address this issue in depth, discussing whether or not this hypothesis is well grounded. By thoroughly investigating and analysing the enormous amount of Chinese documents available from these three periods, research that has never been undertaken before, we will be enable to revise and enrich the present theories and methodologies of language contact studies such as CI (contact-induced) transfers, CI grammaticalization and analogical replication. By comparing and contrasting these socially and linguistically different contacts, and by thoroughly investigating and analyzing the enormous amount of Chinese documents available for these three periods, research never before undertaken, we hope to propose hypotheses and refine general theories on language contact. This will be based on the cases observed in the Chinese language to complement or challenge the existing assumptions and theories on language contact.