This class is a continuation and advancement of ‘Syntax II: functional approaches to syntax’. It is designed to further students knowledge and understanding of the functional issues and theories involved in the analyses of Mandarin Chinese. Besides the Introduction-recent developments in functional approaches to Chinese, the lectures will focus on 10 major areas to explore the unique characters of Mandarin:
1.Basic sentence structure: topic, subject and clause chain
2.Functionalism and Chinese: cognition-based grammar
3.Cognitive basis for grammatical categories: classifiers and VRs
4.Iconicity: temporal sequence and motion sequence
5.The aspectual system: LE/GUO/ZHE and verbal aspect
6.Discourse and grammar: discourse explanation of grammatical form
7.Constructional approach: form-meaning association
8.Emergent grammar: article system
9.Corpus approach: near-synonyms
10.Semantic change and grammatiacalization