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Chinese Language Overview
In inquiries of language, the primary categories to consider are : location, population, family roots, neighbor languages, language varieties, and typology.
Chinese is a non-uniform language ; the different varieties of Chinese are not all mutually-intelligible. Of the seven varieties, most of them cannot be easily understood. For this reason, Beijing Mandarin is used as Standard Chinese or the lingua franca. The seven varieties of Chinese are Mandarin, Wu, Gan, Hakka, Xiang, Min, and Yue.
Therefore, Chinese is a comprehensive term, encompassing all varieties and ages from 2000 BCE to 2000 CE ; it encompasses the spoken, written, standard, and dialectal forms of Chinese. Chinese is a notion due to a similarity of its writing system (traditional v simplified) and cultural and political unity.
漢語 - Hànyǔ is the language of the Hans and is recognized as the main Chinese language
中文 - Zhōngwén is the language of the Middle Empire
普通話 - Pǔtōnghuà is the Standard Chinese language, based on the Beijing dialect
國語 - Guóyǔ is the dialect of Taiwanese
文言 - Wényán is the traditional, written form of Chinese
The seven varieties of Chinese all share certain aspects. They share a monosyllabic nature, where morphemes encompass 99% of the words. All varieties, also, are tonal languages with contrastive tones. Mandarin has four tones with a single neutral, Cantonese has nine tones, and Taiwanese has eight tones. Chinese is, also, an isolating language without verb inflections. Other elements of Chinese are particles and word order flexibility.
好 (hăo) : good
車 (chē) : vehicle
好吃 (hăochī) : delicious
好看 (hăokàn) : pretty
火車 (huŏchē) : train
自行車 (zìxíngchē) : bicycle
There are, however, exceptions to the rule of morphemes. These usually are prevalent in words borrowed from foreign languages.
蝴蝶 (húdié) : butterfly
葡萄 (pútao) : grapes
莎士比亚 (Shāshìbǐyǎ) : Shakespeare
柴可夫斯基 (Cháikěfūsījī) : Tchaikovsky
Natively spoken in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Southeast Asia, and the United States of America, Chinese has 1.3 billion native speakers (in contrast to English’s 350 million).
The language family of China is Sino-Tibetan, and Chinese shares this family with the Tibeto-Karen subfamily : broken down into Karen and Tibeto-Burman. Altogether, the Sino-Tibetan language family includes about 300 subfamilies. This genetic relationship can be confirmed through patterns of sound correspondence in basic lexicon. However, the subfamilies of the Sino-Tibetan family do not share all characteristics. For example, Chinese relies on SVO word order while Tibetan is SOV. Tibetan also borrowed the Sanskrit writing system and Sanskrit’s consonant clusters, whereas Chinese’s writing system is the oldest used in the word and its language is free from consonant clusters.
The neighbors of Chinese are a mixture of Altaic languages (chiefly Mongolian), Thai, Vietnamese, and Miao-Yao. Mongolian, for example, is non-tonal, agglutinative, and follow an alphabetic writing system. Miao-Yao, in contrast, is a tonal language and monosyllabic.
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schedule
Tu, 21 august 2018 : course overview, syllabus
Th, 23 august 2018 : relationship between languages
Tu, 28 august 2018 : relationship between languages
Th, 30 august 2018 : language and country overview (discussion activity)
Tu, 4 september 2018 : chinese overview
Th, 6 september 2018 : chinese overview (continued)
Tu, 11 september 2018 : japanese overview
Th, 13 september 2018 : korean overview, overview of writing systems
Tu, 18 september 2018 : chinese writing system
Th, 20 september 2018 : korean writing system
Tu, 25 september 2018 : japanese writing system
Th, 27 september 2018 : Exam 1 (Units 1 - 3)
Tu, 2 october 2018 : confucianism
Th, 4 october 2018 : confucianism and culture
Tu, 9 october 2018 : expressing hierarchy in communication
Th, 11 october 2018 : gender, family, and language in Japan
Tu, 16 october 2018 : gender, culture, and status in Korea
Th, 18 october 2018 : gender, marriage, and children in China
Tu, 23 october 2018 : introduction to speech, requests, and politeness
Th, 25 october 2018 : apologies
Tu, 30 october 2018 : cross-cultural miscommunications
Th, 1 november 2018 : Exam 2 (Units 4 - 6)
Tu, 6 november 2018 : chinese minorities
Th, 8 november 2018 : japanese minorities
Tu, 13 november 2018 : korean minorities in China and Japan
Th, 15 november 2018 : Paper 2 Peer Review
Tu, 20 november 2018 : words and lexicon
Th, 22 november 2018 : no class
Tu, 27 november 2018 : impact of english on japanese
Th, 29 november 2018 : lexicon and words
Tu, 4 december 2018 : topic confusion
Th, 6 december 2018 : no class
M, 10 december 2018 : Exam 3 (Units 5 - 9)
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syllabus
In this course, we will be exploring the linguistic and cultural aspects of East Asian languages, focusing on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK). Our overall content goals are: to learn about the languages and linguistic structures of CJK, to discuss their similarities and differences, and to introduce several East Asian cultures by examining how people use the language to interact with others. We will examine basic concepts in East Asian cultures, such as hierarchies of age, gender, and status; specific ways in which languages are used for interactions, such as apologies and complaints; the relative value placed on silence and verbal communication; and language and social rights granted to minorities. For each topic, we will consider how it has been reflected in and constantly reconstituted by language use. We will, also, briefly examine specific cultural views on family, philosophy, and treatment of minorities. In terms of linguistics, we will introduce basic concepts central to the study of languages and their interaction with individuals, cultures, and societies. Various topics covered will be related to the American cultural context, and students are encouraged to explore similarities and differences between East Asian cultures and American traditions, as well as other familiar cultures.
Dr. Camp : LSB 116, Th 2:30-4:00
Linus Morales : LSB 102 (TA Area), W 1:00-2:00
There is no textbook for this course. Supplemental materials and articles will be available as scans and links on D2L.
Grading :
Lecture Activities compose 15%
Weekly Quizzes compose 10%
Assignments (5) compose 25%
Papers (2) compose 20%
Exams (3) compose 30%
Class activities will occur on an unscheduled basis to count as a grade ; make-up work is not distributed to any reason. In-class writing activities require the student to answer a question with a short, well-formed paragraph ; these are graded both on content and writing. The lowest two in-class activities will be dropped.
Weekly quizzes are offered at the end of each week on D2L, comprising of materials covered in class and in reading. These have multiple attempts allowed, but no quizzes will be dropped. If there is a need for an appeal on a quiz, the student is expected to print the quiz, find support for their answer in readings or lecture notes, and bring both into office hours.
Assignments are given out over the course of a semester and usually involve either a short response to a course-related topic or a data analysis assignment for theory application. Assignments will be submitted to the D2L Assignments folder ; there are no emailed assignments. Late assignments are accepted with a 10% grade reduction per day. Anticipated absences will be expected to have early submissions. A PDF format is the only format accepted, and all homework most have the proper file naming guidelines and heading.
Papers are assigned twice a semester and require the student to critically consider an issue related to East Asia, demonstrating an understanding of the link between language and culture. The papers will be submitted online using the Assignments folder. Hard copies will be expected for in-class peer review activities.
Exams are held on Tuesday, September 25; Thursday, November 1; and Monday, December 10 (8:00-10:00).
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