Increased Empiricism -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- References -- Subjecthood in Chinese -- 1. Setting the stage -- 2. On subject/object asymmetry in Chinese -- 3. Grammatical relations in Chinese - the neurolinguistic perspective -- Hypotheses concerning processing costs at NP1 and the verb (V) -- Methods -- ERP results -- 4. Discussion -- 5. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- Characteristic syntactic patterns of Mandarin Chinese -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Typologically idiosyncratic word order patterns and syntactic constructions in Mandarin Chinese -- 2.1 "Rel-N" (Relative clause-Noun) word order pattern -- 2.2 "PP-V" (Prepositional phrase-Verb) word order pattern -- 2.3 The word order pattern of "S-P NP-VP" in comparative constructions -- 2.4 The polar question construction "A-not-A" -- 2.5 The potential complement construction "V-de-C" and "V-bu-C" -- 3. Why does Chinese have such peculiar syntactic patterns? -- 4. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- The origins of Sinitic -- 1. The problem of Sinitic -- 1.1 Sinitic and its southern neighbors -- 1.1.1 Lexical correlations -- 1.1.2 The Southeast Asian phonological profile -- 1.2 Morphological evidence for Sino-Tibetan -- 1.2.1 The pronouns -- 1.2.2 Ancient morphology -- 1.3 Syntactic patterns -- 2. The sources of Sinitic -- 2.1 Typology and diachrony: The "creoloid" pattern -- 2.2 The linguistic context -- 3. The origins of Sinitic -- Notes -- References -- Classifier choices in discourse across the seven main Chinese dialects -- 1. Overview: Discourse, not nouns, controls classifiers -- 2. Definitions of classifiers and research methods -- 2.1 Numeral classifiers versus noun classes -- 2.2 Research samples: Spoken narratives and classifier dictionaries.

2.2.1 Spoken sample: The Pear Stories -- 2.2.2 Classifier dictionaries -- 3. Discourse choices: No classifier, a general classifier, or a sortal classifier -- 3.1 Will a classifier appear at all? -- 3.2 Are sortal classifiers more frequent? The general classifier does most of the work -- 3.2.1 Sortal classifiers are unexpectedly low frequency -- 3.2.2 Sortal types in the Pear Stories -- 4. Do noun semantics closely match sortal classifier semantics? -- 4.1 Nouns form good hierarchies. Classifiers do not. -- 4.2. Classifiers do not mark a superordinate hierarchy -- 5. Distinctively Chinese patterns -- 5.1 Dialect distances are significant -- 5.1.1 Classifiers which diverge semantically from Mandarin -- 5.1.2 Unique classifiers -- 6. Conclusion: The importance of a default in discourse -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- The painted word -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Research objectives -- 3. Data -- 4. Data Analysis -- 4.1 Inter-sentential, inter-turn, inter-TCU code-switching -- 4.2 Intra-TCU morpho-syntactic code-switching -- 4.3 Intra-TCU morpho-phonemic code-switching -- 4.4 Intra-TCU bound but free morphemes -- 4.5 Code-doubling -- 5. Discussions/Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Tone realization in younger versus older speakers of Nanjing dialect -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Methodology -- 3. Statistic regression models to compare Slope and Mean values -- 4. Results for monosyllabic tones -- 5. Results for disyllabic Tones -- 6. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Evaluating the emergence of [ʋ] in modern spoken Mandarin -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Acoustic characteristics -- 3. Methodology -- 4. Results -- 5. Discussion -- 6. Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Appendices -- Appendix 1: Research instrument word list -- Appendix 2: Research instrument paragraph -- Appendix 3: Research instrument English translation.

Appendix 4: Research instrument questions -- Appendix 5: Research instrument English translation -- Appendix 6: Participants information -- The Semantic Constraints on the verb+zhe3 Nouns in Mandarin Chinese -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Situation Aspects in Mandarin Chinese -- 3. The restrictions of word formation of transitive verb+ zhe nouns -- 4. The compatibility of -zhe with five verb classes -- 4.1 Activities -- 4.2 Statives -- 4.3 Accomplishments -- 4.4 Achievements -- 4.5 Semelfactives -- 4.6 The productivity of the five verb classes in the verb+zhe nouns -- 5. The verb+ zhe nouns refer to human beings -- 6. Episodic linking of the verb+zhe nouns. -- 7. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- The Semantic Type System of Event Nouns -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Related research -- 3. Evidences of huìyì as an Event Noun -- 3.1 huìyì + qián 'before' / hòu 'after' -- 3.2 Selection by durative temporal expressions -- 3.3 Numeral/Demonstrative + Event Classifier + huìyì -- 4. Argument Structure of huìyì -- 4.1 Argument Types of huìyì -- 4.1.1 Default Arguments of huìyì -- 4.1.2 True Adjuncts of huìyì -- 4.2 huìyì Satisfies Argument Typing of Different Verbs -- 5. Event Structure of huìyì -- 5.1 The Basic Svituation Type of huìyì -- 5.2 Aspectual Shifts of huìyì -- 5.2.1 Accomplishments -- 5.2.2 States -- 5.3 Ambiguity -- 6. Qualia Structure -- 6.1 Differences between huìyì as a Head and a Modifier -- 6.2 huìyì as a Head -- 6.2.1 Formal Modification -- 6.2.2 Constitutive Modification -- 6.3 huìyì as a Modifier -- 6.3.1 Telic Modification -- 6.3.2 Agentive Modification -- 7. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- Semantic Reanalysis in grammaticalization in Chinese -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Semantic reanalysis -- 3. Patterns of semantic change in grammaticalization -- 3.1 Verb > classifier -- 3.2 Verb > auxiliary -- 3.3 Verb > preposition.

4. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- How linear distance and structural distance affect the processing of gap-filler dependencies in head-final relative clauses -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Experimental Design and Methodology -- 2.1 Participants -- 2.2 Design and materials -- 2.3 Apparatus and procedure -- 2.4 Data analysis -- 3. Experiment results -- 3.1 First fixation duration (FFD) -- 3.2 First pass time (FPT) -- 3.3 Go-pass time (GPT) -- 3.4 Total viewing time (TVT) -- 3.5 Summary -- 4. Discussion and implications -- Acknowledgement -- References -- Appendix A -- Variation in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi -- 1. Introduction -- 2. T3S: The case of prepositions and pronouns -- 2.1 The data -- 2.2 Pre-OT analysis -- 2.3 Zhang's (1997) two-input-two-tableau OT analysis -- 3. Modeling variation in OT -- 4. Proposed OT analysis -- 4.1 Constraints -- 4.2 The cut-off point and the ranking process -- 4.3 The analysis -- 4.4 The issue of modeling frequency -- 5. Concluding remarks -- Notes -- References -- The role of instruction in developing pragmatic competence in L2 Chinese -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Pragmatic Competence in a Second Language -- 3. Issues in L2 Pragmatics Instruction -- 4. Summary and Review of Empirical Evidences -- 5. Implications for Teaching and Directions of Future Research -- Notes -- References -- Author index -- Subject index.