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84-470: Wu Chinese has four major schools of romanization. The most popular school, Common Wu Pinyin ( 通用吴语拼音 ), was developed by amateur language clubs and local learners. There are two competing schemes; both adhere to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and are very similar to each other. The initial scheme was "Wu Chinese Society pinyin" ( 吴语协会拼音 , developed around 2005), and it formed

168-605: A collection of folk songs gathered during the Ming dynasty by Feng Menglong in southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, where Northern Wu is today spoken, shows clear signs of modern Wu Chinese in its lexicon. Other Ming documents that are either written in Wu or contain parts where Wu is used include: These works contain a small handful of unique grammatical features, some of which are not found in contemporary Mandarin, Classical Chinese , or in contemporary Wu varieties. They do contain many of

252-548: A depressor that lowers the pitch of the entire syllable's realization. Creaky voice, on the other hand, is found in Taizhounese , and is associated with the rising tone category ( 上聲 ). Xuanzhou Wu is phonologically very unique and has a host of complex syllables, such as: Syntax The word syntax comes from Ancient Greek roots: σύνταξις "coordination", which consists of σύν syn , "together", and τάξις táxis , "ordering". The field of syntax contains

336-764: A direct result of the geography. Coastal varieties also share more featural affinities, likely because the East China Sea provides a means of transportation. The same phenomenon can be seen with Min varieties . It has also been noted that Huizhou Chinese and the Tongtai branch of Huai Chinese share significant similarities with Wu Chinese. Wu is divided into two major groups: Northern Wu ( Chinese : 北部吳語 ; pinyin : Běibù Wúyǔ ) and Southern Wu ( Chinese : 南部吳語 ; pinyin : Nánbù Wúyǔ ), which are not mutually intelligible. Individual words spoken in isolation may be comprehensible among these speakers, but

420-450: A framework known as grammaire générale , first expounded in 1660 by Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot in a book of the same title , dominated work in syntax: as its basic premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and so there is a single most natural way to express a thought. However, in the 19th century, with the development of historical-comparative linguistics , linguists began to realize

504-467: A language that was not only phonologically and lexically different to the Wu Chinese of the time, but was syntactically and morphologically distinct as well. This Old Mandarin influence manifested in the form of the modern literary layer , as it was also the court language of the time. Coblin believes that this literary layer is also the origin of Huai Chinese . Unlike the previous periods,

588-509: A large section of the population and Chinese administrative practices to form the state of Wu . The majority population of the state would have been the ancient Baiyue peoples, who had very different customs and practices compared to the Chinese. It is said in Master Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals that the customs and languages of the states of Wu and Yue were the same. This refers not just to

672-399: A number of various topics that a syntactic theory is often designed to handle. The relation between the topics is treated differently in different theories, and some of them may not be considered to be distinct but instead to be derived from one another (i.e. word order can be seen as the result of movement rules derived from grammatical relations). One basic description of a language's syntax

756-444: A particularly defined entity like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch . Most speakers are only aware of their local variety's affinities with other similarly classified varieties, and will generally only refer to their local Wu variety rather than to the dialect family as a whole. This is typically done by affixing 話 ('speech') to a location's endonym. For example, 溫州話 ( Wu Chinese pronunciation: [ʔy˧꜖ tɕiɤu˧꜖ ɦo˩꜒꜔] )

840-450: A potential proto-system for Wu using the several varieties included in these boundaries. A similar attempt was attempted by William L. Ballard, though with significantly fewer localities and a heavy skew towards the North . The sole basis of Li Rong 's classification was the evolution of Qieyun system voiced stops . This was also Chao's only "necessary and sufficient" requirement for

924-659: A singular nasal and a glottal stop . Some varieties however, may deviate from this and have features such as the addition of -/k/ , or the omission of the glottal stop. Wu varieties typically preserve Qieyun system voiced initials ( /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ , /z/ , /v/ , etc.) though some varieties have lost this feature. Implosives are also occasionally found in Wu varieties, primarily in suburban Shanghainese varieties , as well as in Yongkangese  [ zh ] . Wu languages have typologically high numbers of vowels and are on par with Germanic languages in having

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1008-491: A variety to be Wu. This definition is problematic considering the devoicing process has occurred in many Southern Wu varieties and in Northern Wu varieties situated near Huai Chinese . It furthermore would place unrelated varieties such as Old Xiang in this category, and also includes Hangzhounese despite its linguistically complex situation. Therefore, more elaborate systems have developed, but they still mostly delineate

1092-435: Is a categorial grammar that adds in partial tree structures to the categories. Theoretical approaches to syntax that are based upon probability theory are known as stochastic grammars . One common implementation of such an approach makes use of a neural network or connectionism . Functionalist models of grammar study the form–function interaction by performing a structural and a functional analysis. Generative syntax

1176-553: Is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai , Zhejiang province , and parts of Jiangsu province , especially south of the Yangtze River , which makes up the cultural region of Wu . The Wu languages are at times simply called Shanghainese , especially when introduced to foreigners. The Suzhounese variety was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century, but had been replaced in status by Shanghainese by

1260-451: Is accepted that these readings would have been loaned from the language variety of medieval Jiankang. One prominent historical speaker of the medieval Wu language was Emperor Yangdi of the Sui dynasty and his Empress Xiao . Emperor Xuan of Western Liang , a member of Emperor Wu of Liang 's court, was Empress Xiao's grandfather and he most likely learned Wu at Jiankang . It is also noted in

1344-413: Is concerned. (For a detailed and critical survey of the history of syntax in the last two centuries, see the monumental work by Giorgio Graffi (2001). ) There are a number of theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax. One school of thought, founded in the works of Derek Bickerton , sees syntax as a branch of biology, since it conceives of syntax as the study of linguistic knowledge as embodied in

1428-460: Is defined as an element that requires two NPs (its subject and its direct object) to form a sentence. That is notated as (NP/(NP\S)), which means, "A category that searches to the right (indicated by /) for an NP (the object) and generates a function (equivalent to the VP) which is (NP\S), which in turn represents a function that searches to the left for an NP and produces a sentence." Tree-adjoining grammar

1512-467: Is not uncommon to encounter children who grew up with a regional variant of Mandarin as their parent tongue with little or no fluency in a Wu variety at all. This led to a step up in the preservation and documentation of Wu Chinese, with the first major attempt being the Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects , which surveyed 2,791 locations across the nation, including 121 Wu locations (an increase from

1596-448: Is seen in the Book of Wei , which unflatteringly compares the speech of Jiangdong to the calls of wild animals. The court language of Jiankang at this time would not have been the same as the civilian Wu language, though it would have been closely related. This would also mark the time where Japanese Go-on ( 呉音 ; Hepburn : go-on ; pinyin : Wúyīn ) readings were loaned, and it

1680-443: Is the performance–grammar correspondence hypothesis by John A. Hawkins , who suggests that language is a non-innate adaptation to innate cognitive mechanisms. Cross-linguistic tendencies are considered as being based on language users' preference for grammars that are organized efficiently and on their avoidance of word orderings that cause processing difficulty. Some languages, however, exhibit regular inefficient patterning such as

1764-519: Is the sequence in which the subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV . The other possible sequences are VSO , VOS , OVS , and OSV , the last three of which are rare. In most generative theories of syntax, the surface differences arise from a more complex clausal phrase structure, and each order may be compatible with multiple derivations. However, word order can also reflect

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1848-542: Is the study of syntax within the overarching framework of generative grammar . Generative theories of syntax typically propose analyses of grammatical patterns using formal tools such as phrase structure grammars augmented with additional operations such as syntactic movement . Their goal in analyzing a particular language is to specify rules which generate all and only the expressions which are well-formed in that language. In doing so, they seek to identify innate domain-specific principles of linguistic cognition, in line with

1932-558: Is used for Wenzhounese . Affixing 閒話 is also common, and more typical of Northern Wu, as in 嘉興閒話 ( Wugniu : ka-shin ghae-o ) for the Jiaxing variety  [ zh ] . Names for the group as a whole include: It is believed that Han Chinese peoples first arrived at the area during pre-dynastic history . After the migrations proceeding the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians ,

2016-564: The Baiyue language of the area, but also of that of "Ancient Wu", a Sinitic language likely only used by the nobility. The northern border of this Ancient Wu language is at the Huai River rather than the Yangtze like it is today, and its southern limits may have reached as far as Fujian , as Proto-Min may have been a daughter language to Ancient Wu, though this is not fully accepted. As early as

2100-577: The Eastern Wu dynasty , commentators criticized the speech of the Southern aristocracy (ie. that of the Wu-speaking areas), noting that it is neither Wu-sounding nor Northern. However, evidence suggests that the primary language among the populace was, in fact, Sinitic, although not one that was perceived as "civilized". This possible civilian language would be a common Jiangdong Sinitic language ( 古江東方言 ), as

2184-495: The Grammaire générale . ) Syntactic categories were identified with logical ones, and all sentences were analyzed in terms of "subject – copula – predicate". Initially, that view was adopted even by the early comparative linguists such as Franz Bopp . The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, which could reasonably be called the "century of syntactic theory" as far as linguistics

2268-585: The Jianghuai area due to events such as the Red Turban Rebellions . The Hongwu Emperor ordered for people from Jiangnan , primarily in Suzhou , Songjiang , Jiaxing , Hangzhou , and other Northern Wu -speaking areas, to resettle the now depopulated areas in modern central Jiangsu . More migration happened several decades later to avoid wokou pirates. These migrations are believed to have contributed to

2352-1158: The Qieyun system , this Old Chinese dialect cannot be the primary origin of Wu Chinese today. It is known that Wu languages inherited a significant number of loanwords of Kra-Dai origin. A study of the variety spoken in Maqiao , a suburb of Shanghai , found that 126 out of around a thousand lexical items surveyed were of Kra-Dai origin. Terms such as 落蘇 ( Wugniu : loq-su 1 " aubergine ") are also shared between other Sinitic languages (eg. Teochew , Peng'im : lag sou ) as well as Kra-Dai languages (cf. Standard Zhuang lwggwz ). Shared terms with Austroasiatic languages have also been suggested, though many of them, such as Vietnamese đầm , bèo , and kè , have also been argued to be areal features , Chinese words in disguise, or long shots. Though Sino-Tibetan , Kra-Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic are mostly considered to be unrelated to each other, Laurent Sagart has proposed some possible phylogenetic affinities. Specifically, Tai–Kadai and Sino-Tibetan could possibly both belong to

2436-492: The Qing dynasty , missionaries began translating the Bible into various local varieties, recording the exact pronunciations of many varieties for the first time. This was also when the economic boom of Shanghai happened, leading to its urban variety becoming the prestige variety over that of Suzhou . The 20th century marked a pivotal moment of Wu linguistic change, as Standard Mandarin

2520-496: The Wenqiji ( 问奇集 ; 問奇集 ; Wènqíjí ) includes a chapter called Gedi Xiangyin ( 各地鄉音 ) that records the local pronunciations of terms in various areas. Unlike the Qieyun preface, it separates the early Southwestern Mandarin of Huguang , ie. that of Chu, from Wu Chinese. The chapter records typical features of modern Wu, such as: Texts in the early Qing dynasty remained much

2604-782: The Wu Hu uprising and the Disaster of Yongjia during the Western Jin dynasty , collectively known as the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians , the imperial court from the Heluo region , along with a large migration wave from the North that lasted 150 years, primarily northern Jiangsu and much of Shandong , entered the Jiangnan region , establishing a new capital at Jiankang , modern-day Nanjing . Migrants went as far south as central Zhejiang , though many settled in

Romanization of Wu Chinese - Misplaced Pages Continue

2688-414: The checked tone in the form of a glottal stop . Wu varieties also have noticably unique morphological and syntactic innovations, as well as lexicon exclusively found in the Wu grouping. It is also of note that the influential linguist Chao Yuen Ren was a native speaker of Changzhounese , a variety of Northern Wu. The Wu varieties, especially that of Suzhou, are traditionally perceived as soft in

2772-504: The northern Wu-speaking areas occurred, which some believe created the north-south geographical divide we see today. Yongjianese  [ zh ] , a variety of Oujiang Wu , was first recorded during the Song dynasty . Yongjianese is the variety in which the Liushugu  [ zh ] ( 六書故 ) by Dai Tong  [ zh ] ( 戴侗 , 1200-1285) is written. This treaty of calligraphy

2856-512: The turn of the 20th century , coinciding with a period of rapid language change in the city. The languages of Northern Wu constitute a language family and are mutually intelligible with each other, while those of Southern Wu neither form a phylogenetic language family, nor are mutually intelligible with each other. Historical linguists view Wu of great significance due to its obviously distinct nature. The Wu languages typically preserve all voiced initials of medieval Chinese , as well as

2940-549: The Huai variety was confined inside the town itself until the 1960s; at present, it is overtaking the Wu variety even in rural areas. Several important proponents of vernacular Chinese in official use, such as Lu Xun and Chao Yuen Ren , were speakers of Northern Wu varieties, in this case Shaoxingese and Changzhounese respectively. Wenzhounese was used during the Second World War to avoid Japanese interception. After

3024-775: The Sino-Austronesian language family (not to be confused with Austroasiatic) due to a scattering of cognates between their ancestral forms, and there is also some, albeit much more tenuous, evidence to suggest that Austroasiatic should also be included. However, his views are but one among competing hypotheses about the phylogeny of these languages, and is not widely accepted. See the Sino-Austronesian languages article for some further detail. It does appear that Wu varieties have had non-Sinitic influences, and many contain words cognate with those of other languages in various strata. These words however are few and far between, and Wu on

3108-444: The VO languages Chinese , with the adpositional phrase before the verb, and Finnish , which has postpositions, but there are few other profoundly exceptional languages. More recently, it is suggested that the left- versus right-branching patterns are cross-linguistically related only to the place of role-marking connectives ( adpositions and subordinators ), which links the phenomena with

3192-412: The Wu of today and that of the 13th century . The Ming dynasty saw continued development of local operas, such as Suzhou pingtan , and more vernacular texts being written. In particular, the contemporary Classic Chinese Novels , such as Water Margin , are believed to have significant lexical and syntactic influence from Hangzhounese . The Yuan-Ming transition saw a tremendous loss of life in

3276-603: The Wu-like features in western Huai Chinese groups, such as Tongtai . Dialectal differences were not as obvious in textual sources until Ming times, and thus regional linguistic distinctions were only seen in media after the fall of the Yuan. These differences are largely found in musical sources such as historical folk songs and tanci (a kind of ballad or lyric poem). For instance, the Shange ( 山歌 ; Shāngē ; 'Mountain songs'),

3360-482: The Wu-speaking area. Xuanzhou Wu therefore significantly receded, which is reflected in the fact that it is now only spoken in the mountainous highlands of southern Anhui . Some territorial changes and stratification occurred, primarily near the Yangtze River . The newly-arrived Huai Chinese varieties have been slowly overtaking the suburban and rural Wu varieties. For instance, in Lishui county, Nanjing prefecture,

3444-483: The basis of "Wugniu pinyin" ( 吴语学堂拼音 , around 2016). Wu Chinese Society pinyin in general does not mark tones. The name Wugniu comes from the Shanghainese pronunciation of 吴语. Either of them is the default romanization scheme in most learning materials. The second and historical school is the missionary school (see zh:吴语拉丁化方案 ). This school of English-based Latin orthographies was developed by Western missionaries in

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3528-919: The collection Zhuibaiqiu ( 綴白裘 ), and the legends written by Shen Qifeng  [ zh ] or what are known as Shenshi Sizhong ( 沈氏四種 ), as well as huge numbers of tanci ( 彈詞 ) ballads. From the late Qing period to Republican China (the 19th and early 20th centuries), long-form vernacular novels ( 蘇白小說 or 吳語小說 ) such as The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai ( 海上花列傳 ) and The Nine-tailed Turtle ( 九尾龜 ) started appearing. Both above examples are pornographic in nature. Other works include: Wu-speaking writers who wrote in vernacular Mandarin often left traces of their native varieties in their works, as can be found in Guanchang Xianxing Ji and Fubao Xiantan ( 負曝閒談 ). Works in this period also saw an explosion of new vocabulary in Wu varieties to describe their changing world. This clearly reflects

3612-564: The critical historical factors for these boundaries lies in the movement of the population of speakers. This is often determined by the administrative boundaries established during imperial times . As such, imperial boundaries are essential for delineating one variety from another, and many varieties' isogloss clusters line up perfectly with the county boundaries established in imperial times, although some counties contain more than one variety and others may span several counties . Another factor that influences movement and transportation, as well as

3696-403: The ears of speakers of both Wu and non-Wu languages, leading to the idiom "the tender speech of Wu" ( 吴侬软语 ; 吳儂軟語 ). Speakers of Wu varieties are mostly unaware of this term for their speech, since the classificatory imposition of "Wu" used in linguistics today is a relatively recent coinage. Saying someone "speaks Wu" is therefore akin to saying someone "speaks a Romance language"; it is not

3780-428: The establishment of administrative boundaries, is geography. Northernmost Zhejiang and Jiangsu are very flat—being in the middle of a river delta , and as such are more uniform than the more mountainous regions farther south towards Fujian . The Taihu varieties, like Mandarin in the flat northern plains , are more homogeneous than Southern Wu, which has a significantly greater diversity of linguistic forms, likely

3864-453: The exclusive use of Mandarin as well as certain Mandarin promotion measures, promotion and regularization of Wu languages became improbable and left them more prone to Mandarinization. In 1992, students in Shanghai were banned from speaking Shanghainese at all times on campuses. As of now, Wu has no official status, no legal protection and there is no officially sanctioned romanization . It

3948-474: The flowing discourse of everyday life mostly is not. Another lesser group, Western Wu , is synonymous with the Xuanzhou division, which not only has a larger influence from the surrounding Mandarin varieties than much of Northern Wu, but also has very unique phonetic innovations, making it typologically quite different to the rest of Wu. Southern Wu is well known among linguists and sinologists as being one of

4032-535: The formation of modern Wu, with many early coincidental strata that are hard to differentiate today. It is unclear as to when exactly the language of the Baiyue became extinct, though during the Eastern Han dynasty , Kra-Dai words were recorded in the everyday vernacular of people in the region, and by the end of the Western Jin, the common language of the region was Sinitic, as will be explained below. As early as

4116-557: The founding of the People's Republic of China , the strong promotion of Mandarin in the Wu-speaking region yet again influenced the development of Wu Chinese. Curiously, Wenzhounese was used again during the Vietnam War to avoid enemy comprehensibility. Wu varieties were gradually excluded from most modern media and schools. With the influx of a migrant non-Wu-speaking population, the near total conversion of public media and organizations to

4200-504: The framework of generative grammar, which holds that syntax depends on a genetic endowment common to the human species. In that framework and in others, linguistic typology and universals have been primary explicanda. Alternative explanations, such as those by functional linguists , have been sought in language processing . It is suggested that the brain finds it easier to parse syntactic patterns that are either right- or left- branching but not mixed. The most-widely held approach

4284-589: The geographically less challenging areas in the north, that is to say, the Yangtze Delta and the Hangjiahu Plain . Early stages of this period of change was likely marked by diglossia , with the commonfolk typically speaking Ancient Wu or their native Shandong or northern Jiangsu Chinese, and the nobility, both new migrants and old aristocracy, typically speaking a varity not dissimilar to that of early medieval Luoyang . This linguistic situation eventually led to

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4368-478: The great social changes which were occurring during the time. At the same time, missionary Joseph Edkins gathered large amounts of data and published several educational works on Shanghainese , as well as Bibles in a few major Wu varieties, including Southern Wu varieties such as Jinhuanese and Wenzhounese . Following the Taiping Rebellion , many migrants from Mandarin -speaking areas migrated into

4452-517: The greater scope of Sinitic languages is less easily typified than prototypically northern Chinese varieties such as Mandarin or prototypically southern Chinese varieties such as Cantonese . Its original classification, along with the other Sinitic varieties, was established in 1937 by Li Fang-Kuei , whose boundaries more or less have remained the same, and were adopted by Yuan Jiahua in his influential 1961 dialect primer. These limits were also adopted by Chao Yuen Ren , and he even further created

4536-566: The history of Wu Chinese after the Mongol conquest of China becomes a lot clearer, due to the emergence of vernacular texts. Following the Mongol conquest of China , a period of relative stability followed, and vernacularism started being further embraced. This is evident in the fact that Chinese opera productions, including those of both the Northern and Southern Wu-speaking regions, started using their local varieties rather than Classical Chinese , as

4620-456: The human mind . Other linguists (e.g., Gerald Gazdar ) take a more Platonistic view since they regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system . Yet others (e.g., Joseph Greenberg ) consider syntax a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages. Syntacticians have attempted to explain the causes of word-order variation within individual languages and cross-linguistically. Much of such work has been done within

4704-418: The issue, although major international databases , such as Glottolog and Ethnologue , do not share similar sentiments. Although more TV programs are appearing in Wu varieties, they are no longer permitted to air during primetime. They are generally more playful than serious and many of these shows, such as Hangzhou 's " 阿六頭説新聞 " ("Old Liutou tells you the news"), provide local or regional news in

4788-610: The largest vowel quality inventories in the world. The Jinhui variety , spoken in Shanghai's Fengxian District , can be analyzed to have 20 vowel qualities. The abnormal number of vowels in Wu is due in part to rimes ending in glottal stops may be analysed as a short vowel in many varieties, as well as unique sound shifts, such as the tensing of Qieyun system shan ( 山 ) and xian ( 咸 ) rimes, among other factors. Both breathy and creaky voice are also found in Wu varieties. Breathy voice appears in Northern Wu and may act as

4872-540: The late 19th and early 20th centuries and used to write Bible translations and other educational texts. A representative romanization from this school is the Edkins romanization of Shanghainese. Another school is the Latin Phonetic Method ( 吴语拉丁式注音法 , French-Wu or Fawu [ 法吴 ]). Its use is in decline. It utilizes the similarities between French and Wu phonetics and thus adheres to both IPA and French orthography . It

4956-497: The latter of which even having international titles. Today, popular support for the preservation of Wu languages is very strong, while feature-length movies such as B for Busy and highly successful TV shows such as Blossoms Shanghai have been filmed in Wu varieties (in both aforementioned cases, Shanghainese ). It is now not uncommon to see advertisements and billboards, as well as government media, using Wu Chinese written in non- ad hoc orthographies. Wu's place within

5040-423: The left (indicated by \) for an NP (the element on the left) and outputs a sentence (the element on the right)." Thus, the syntactic category for an intransitive verb is a complex formula representing the fact that the verb acts as a function word requiring an NP as an input and produces a sentence level structure as an output. The complex category is notated as (NP\S) instead of V. The category of transitive verb

5124-538: The most internally diverse among the Sinitic groups , with very little mutual intelligibility between varieties across subgroups. In the first edition of Li 's Language Atlas of China , Wu was divided into six groups ( 片 ): Cao Zhiyun rearranged some of the Southern Wu divisions based on a larger corpus of data. According to Cao, it can be divided into three broad divisions: Taizhounese remained unchanged as it

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5208-601: The most notable one is the Shanghainese Pinyin ( 上海话拼音方案 , often shortened to Qian's Pin [钱拼]), developed by Qian Nairong in 2006. This school is often used in formally published dictionaries and textbooks compiled by Qian and others. All examples are given in Shanghainese and Suzhounese . Wu Chinese Wu ( simplified Chinese : 吴语 ; traditional Chinese : 吳語 ; pinyin : Wúyǔ ; Wugniu and IPA : wu-gniu 6 [ɦu˩.nʲy˦] ( Shanghainese ), ghou-gniu 6 [ɦou˨.nʲy˧] ( Suzhounese ))

5292-476: The place of that division, he positioned the verb as the root of all clause structure. Categorial grammar is an approach in which constituents combine as function and argument , according to combinatory possibilities specified in their syntactic categories . For example, other approaches might posit a rule that combines a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP), but CG would posit a syntactic category NP and another NP\S , read as "a category that searches to

5376-626: The preface of the Qieyun , a Sui dynasty rime dictionary , that the speech of Wu, as well as that of Chu , is "at times too soft and light". A "ballad–narrative" ( 說晿詞話 ) known as The Story of Xue Rengui Crossing the Sea and Pacifying Liao ( 薛仁貴跨海征遼故事 ), which is about the Tang dynasty hero Xue Rengui , is believed to have been written in the Suzhounese . After the An Lushan rebellion , significant migration into

5460-482: The same as that of the Ming dynasty. Works of the time include the Qingzhongpu ( 清忠譜 ) and Doupeng xianhua ( 豆棚閒話 ), an early Qing baihua novel. During the 18th century , significant lexical shifts away from that seen in Shange took place; many sources we have of the period are operatic in nature. Representative works from this section include the operas (especially kunqu operas) by Qian Decang ( 錢德蒼 ) in

5544-502: The same regions. Regardless of the justification, the Wu region has been clearly outlined, and Li's boundary in some ways has remained the de facto standard. In Jerry Norman 's usage, Wu dialects can be considered "central dialects" or dialects that are clearly in a transition zone containing features that typify both northern and southern Chinese varieties. Dialectologists traditionally establish linguistic boundaries based on several overlapping isoglosses of linguistic features. One of

5628-540: The same type. The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini , from c.  4th century BC in Ancient India , is often cited as an example of a premodern work that approaches the sophistication of a modern syntactic theory since works on grammar had been written long before modern syntax came about. In the West, the school of thought that came to be known as "traditional grammar" began with the work of Dionysius Thrax . For centuries,

5712-453: The semantic mapping of sentences. Dependency grammar is an approach to sentence structure in which syntactic units are arranged according to the dependency relation, as opposed to the constituency relation of phrase structure grammars . Dependencies are directed links between words. The (finite) verb is seen as the root of all clause structure and all the other words in the clause are either directly or indirectly dependent on this root (i.e.

5796-527: The semantics or function of the ordered elements. Another description of a language considers the set of possible grammatical relations in a language or in general and how they behave in relation to one another in the morphosyntactic alignment of the language. The description of grammatical relations can also reflect transitivity, passivization , and head-dependent-marking or other agreement. Languages have different criteria for grammatical relations. For example, subjecthood criteria may have implications for how

5880-465: The sheer diversity of human language and to question fundamental assumptions about the relationship between language and logic. It became apparent that there was no such thing as the most natural way to express a thought and so logic could no longer be relied upon as a basis for studying the structure of language. The Port-Royal grammar modeled the study of syntax upon that of logic. (Indeed, large parts of Port-Royal Logic were copied or adapted from

5964-574: The subject is referred to from a relative clause or coreferential with an element in an infinite clause. Constituency is the feature of being a constituent and how words can work together to form a constituent (or phrase ). Constituents are often moved as units, and the constituent can be the domain of agreement. Some languages allow discontinuous phrases in which words belonging to the same constituent are not immediately adjacent but are broken up by other constituents. Constituents may be recursive , as they may consist of other constituents, potentially of

6048-549: The time of Guo Pu (275–324), speakers easily perceived differences between dialects in different parts of China, including the area where Ancient Wu was spoken. The language slowly receded from the north due to growing pressure from the Central Plains , until its northern limit was set near the Yangtze River towards the end of the Western Jin dynasty . Note, however, that due to the fact that all modern Wu varieties work within

6132-459: The two locations in PKU's earlier surveys). This also led to the formation of an elaborate database including digital recordings of all locations, however, this database is not available to the general public. The atlas's editor, Cao Zhiyun, considers many of these languages "endangered" and has introduced the term 濒危方言 ('languages in danger' or 'endangered local languages') to raise people's attention to

6216-496: The unique features in its vocabulary present in contemporary Wu, such as pronouns , but clearly indicate that not all of the earlier unique features of these Wu varieties were carried into present varieties. These works also possess a number of characters uniquely formed to express features not found in the classical language and used some common characters as phonetic loans (see Chinese character classification ) to express other uniquely Wu vocabulary. A 16th century text called

6300-402: The variety, but most are limited to fifteen minutes of airtime. Popular video sites such as Youku and Tudou also host a variety of user-uploaded audio and visual media in many Wu varieties, most of which are regional TV shows, although some are user-created songs and the like. A number of books are also appearing to teach people how to speak Wu varieties such as Suzhounese and Shanghainese ,

6384-414: The verb). Some prominent dependency-based theories of syntax are the following: Lucien Tesnière (1893–1954) is widely seen as the father of modern dependency-based theories of syntax and grammar. He argued strongly against the binary division of the clause into subject and predicate that is associated with the grammars of his day (S → NP VP) and remains at the core of most phrase structure grammars. In

6468-567: The vernacular that would later lead to modern Wu Chinese started taking shape, though the court language of Jiankang (today Nanjing ) was still noticably different to that of the commonfolk. A second migration wave during the Southern Song dynasty , this time to Lin'an (Hangzhou), led to the formation of the modern literary layer , and during the Yuan and Ming dynasties , many operatic traditions and vernacular texts began to appear. Later, during

6552-403: The whole is most strongly influenced by other Chinese languages rather than any other linguistic influence. This period is bookended by two major migration waves into the Wu-speaking area. The first was in the 4th century CE from primarily the mountains of Shandong , whereas the second happened during the 12th century CE , and originated from the Heluo region. Due to events such as

6636-511: The wider goals of the generative enterprise. Generative syntax is among the approaches that adopt the principle of the autonomy of syntax by assuming that meaning and communicative intent is determined by the syntax, rather than the other way around. Generative syntax was proposed in the late 1950s by Noam Chomsky , building on earlier work by Zellig Harris , Louis Hjelmslev , and others. Since then, numerous theories have been proposed under its umbrella: Other theories that find their origin in

6720-503: Was promoted nation-wide , though the 21st century is seeing revival efforts for many Wu Chinese varieties. Before the migration of the Han Chinese peoples, the Jiangnan region was inhabited by Kra-Dai or Austroasiatic peoples, which were dubbed barbarians by the early Chinese. According to traditional history, Taibo of Wu settled in the area during the Shang dynasty , bringing along

6804-501: Was developed in 2001 by a Shanghai -born surgeon living in Lyon , France . The final, and least used school, is developed by modifying Hanyu pinyin as sanctioned by the State Council . It is the only school developed by professional linguists, mostly working in state-administered universities . While more than 20 competing schemes within this school have been published since the 1980s,

6888-693: Was not included in the study. This was later adopted by the second edition of Li's Atlas . Minor adjustments were also made regarding Northern Wu subdivisions. Wu varieties typically possess a larger phonological inventory than many Sinitic languages . Many varieties also have tone systems known for highly complex tone sandhi . Phonologies of Wu varieties are diverse and hard to generalize. As such, only typologically significant features will be discussed here. For more information, refer to individual varieties' pages. In terms of consonants , those in initial positions are more plentiful than those in finals . Finals typically only permit two consonant phonemes ,

6972-580: Was published in 1320. After the Jingkang incident , the imperial capital of the Song dynasty was moved from Bianjing (modern-day Kaifeng) to Lin'an (Hangzhou), starting the Southern Song period. This also coincided with a large migration wave mostly from the Heluo region, a strip of the Central Plains south of the Yellow River that roughly stretches from Luoyang to Kaifeng , which also brought

7056-533: Was the norm during and before the Song dynasty. The Tō-on ( 唐音 ; Hepburn : tō-on ; Pinyin : Tángyīn ) pronunciations introduced during the Japanese Kamakura period were largely rooted in the vernacular of northern Zhejiang at around the end of the Song dynasty or start of the Yuan dynasty , despite what its name may suggest. Analyses on texts of the time reveal stark phonetic differences between

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