Abstract:

Previous studies on Chinese motion-with purpose patterns such as ‘go and have a look’ have often focused on the syntactic position of the motion-expressing morpheme (‘go’ or ‘come’): before or after the VP expressing the purpose of motion. In this talk, I will explore five textbooks reflecting Northern Mandarin as documented in late 19^th cen. to the 1930’s, and show the relatively high frequency of redundant patterns, where motion-expressing morphemes occur both before and after the purpose VP. This helps us go beyond the apparent binary opposition (qù + VP vs VP qu), and makes it easier to tackle the huge variety found in those patterns throughout Northern Sinitic. The textbooks under discussions are: 《官話指南》(Boussole du langage mandarin, 1882)、Rudiments de parler chinois《漢語入門》(Léon Wieger, 1895)、《燕京婦語》(1906)、Chinese-English Mandarin Phrase Book (Peking Dialect), (T.C. Fulton, 1911); The structural Principles of the Chinese Language (Josef Mullie, 1937).

Biography:

Prof. Christine Lamarre is currently Professor emerita at Inalco, Paris, and a member of the Research Center for East-Asian Linguistics (CRLAO, UMR 8563). She earned her PhD in Chinese linguistics from EHESS, France, and Tsukuba University, Japan. Her current research interests lie primarily in linguistic typology, with a focus on Sinitic languages and internal diversity within the Mandarin group, and in the encoding of spatial events.