LSASL 66: A Grammar of Shanghai Wu

A Grammar of Shanghai Wu

Xiaonong Zhu
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

The Wu dialect of Chinese is used by 80 million people in eastern China. Shanghai is the lingua franca of Wu, and is the least conservative among Wu dialects.

This book is a descriptive grammar of Shanghai Wu, concise but comprehensive. It covers various topics in Shanghai grammar: the phonological system, morphology, and syntax. In addition, two special topics in Shanghai grammar, tone sandhi and compounding, are included. Tone sandhi in Shanghai is a morpho-phonological process to produce prosodic words, while compounding is a syntactic means to make lexical words.

Like other Chinese dialects, Shanghai is an isolating language. There is no grammatical agreement or case markers, nor tense, gender or numeral differences, or anything like those called inflection in European languages. That does not mean there are no morphological processes at all: reduplication, tone sandhi, and affixation are common in Shanghai. Of course, compounding is the most productive in making new words.

Morphologically and syntactically Shanghai has something different from Mandarin. For example, adjective reduplication in Shanghai is AAB, while it is ABB in Mandarin. The word order in Shanghai is ‘V + direct O + indirect O’, different from Mandarin’s ‘V + indirect O + direct O’. The author, Dr. Xiaonong Zhu, is currently teaching at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He published widely in Chinese historical phonology, Chinese dialectology, and experimental phonetics.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER TWO
SYLLABLE AND PHONOLOGY
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Initials
2.3. Finals
2.3.2. Rhymes
2.4. Tones
2.5. Transcriptions
2.6. Phonotactics
2.7. Syllable

CHAPTER THREE
TONE SANDHI AND PROSODIC WORD
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Left-Dominant Sandhi
3.3. Right-Dominant Sandhi
3.4. Tone Sandhi And Stress

CHAPTER FOUR
WORD AND MORPHOLOGY
4.1 Introduction
4.2. Nominal Mophology
4.3. Verbs And Other Parts Of Speech

CHAPTER FIVE
COMPOUNDS
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Subject-Predicate Compounds
5.3. Coordinate Compounds
5.4. Subordinate Compounds
5.5. Verb-Object Compounds
5.6. Verb-Complement Compounds
5.7. Verb-Localizer Compounds
5.8. Complex Compounds

CHAPTER SIX
SYNTAX
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Word Order
6.3. Phrasal Structure
6.4. Sentence Types
6.5. Complex Sentences
6.6. Compound Sentences

CHAPTER SEVEN
SAMPLE TEXTS
7.1. A Story About The North Wind And The Sun
7.2. Father's Riddles

REFERENCES

ABBREVIATIONS

ISBN 9783895869006 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 66.190pp. 2006.