Stephen Self AL 5406 - Phinnemore 25 January 2013 Annotated Bibliography

Duanmu, San. 2002. The phonology of standard Chinese, 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, rulebased 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 Optimality Theory 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 is still possible. The possibility of such idiom chunks in the object position of argues 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

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.