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Stephen Self

AL 5406 - Phinnemore

25 January 2013

Annotated Bibliography

Duanmu, San. 2002. The phonology of standardChinese, 2nd edn. (The Phonology of the Worlds

Languages.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

A phonologist specializing in Chinese with a Ph.D. from MIT, Duanmu has been a major

contributor in the field of Mandarin phonology for more than two decades. Here, he provides a

comprehensive study of Mandarin phonology, proposing new theoretical solutions to long-standing

problems in Chinese phonology. For example, in chapters 5-8, Duanmu develops a proposal to explain

the puzzling facts of word order in verb-object and noun-noun compounds emphasizing stress and

footedness of syllables. He includes a thorough review of the relevant past literature in each chapter. His

discussion of prenuclear glides, syllabic consonants, and third tone sandhi are of particular interest to our

current Field Methods group. One significant criticism of the work is that Duanmu mixes traditional, rule-

based phonology and Optimality Theory throughout the book, a decision which imperils the continuity of

his discussion and the ease of evaluation of his ideas. He also uses a non-standard form of OptimalityTheory with some idiosyncratic notation which can initially cause problems of comprehension for readers

familiar with mainstream OT. Overall, though, this book provides a thorough survey of the phonological

system of Mandarin with insightful analyses of thorny theoretical issues. It is very useful for anyone

seeking a fuller understanding of the phonology of Mandarin.

Goodall, Grant. 1990. X-internal word order in Mandarin Chinese and universal grammar.Linguistics

28.2: 241-261.

Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego, Grant Goodall has specialized

in theoretical syntax for much of his professional career. Here, he tackles the theoretical concern of the

directionality of CASE and -marking (i.e. assignment of grammatical relations and semantic roles).

Previous accounts had required that the head of a phrase appear adjacent to one of the boundaries of the

phrase, such that both CASE-marking and -marking had to proceed unidirectionally, leading to the

existence of head-initial and head-final languages. However, evidence from several languages, most

notably Mandarin, indicates another possible configuration: head-medial. Mandarin actually allows direct

objects to appear either to the right or left of the verb; in the latter case, the objects must be marked by a

particle . In special extent or resultative clauses of the type The girl cried so much that Zhangsan

was very sad, this so-called -construction can result in the downstairs subject appearing to the left of

the matrix verb, as in the case of clause reduction or reconstruction in Romance languages. Additionally,

if the downstairs clause contains an idiom, the -construction version of it with the stranded subject isstill possible. The possibility of such idiom chunks in the object position ofargues that this sentence

position is not -marked (i.e. receives no semantic role from the verb). Furthermore, some Mandarin

verbs that subcategorize for PPs require the PPs to the left of the verb while the direct object NP appears

to the right. That is, -marking would seem to be both to the left and the right. These facts of Mandarin

word order present significant problems for theoretical accounts of the directionality of CASE- and -

marking. While the articles perspective on the theoretical issues of Chomskian syntax is a bit dated by

now (for example, Goodall still uses the D-structure/S-structure terminology), its discussion of the word

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Stephen Self

AL 5406 - Phinnemore

25 January 2013

Annotated Bibliography

order properties of Mandarin clauses is very much of interest. Mandarin is a well-known problem for

generalizations about word order; Grants piece provides evidence and discussion of that problematic

status.