Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction
1: Hilary Chappell: Synchrony and Diachrony of Sinitic Languages: A Brief History of Chinese Dialects
Part II: Typological and Comparative Grammar
2: Yunji Wu: The Development of Locative Markers in the Xiang-Changsha Dialect
3: Hilary Chappell: A Typology of Evidential Markers in Sinitic Languages
4: Christine Lamarre: Verb Complement Constructions in Chinese Dialects: Types and Markers
Part III: Historical and Diachronic Grammar
5: Laurent Sagart: Vestiges of Archaic Chinese Derivational Affixes in Modern Chinese Dialects
6: Redouane Djamouri: Markers of Predication in Shang Bone Inscriptions
7: Alain Peyraube: On the Modal Auxiliaries of Volition in Classical Chinese
Part IV: Yue Grammar
8: Hung-Nin Samuel Cheung: The Interrogative Construction: (Re)constructing Early Cantonese Grammar
9: Anne Yue: The Verb Complement Construction in Historical Perspective with Special Reference to Cantonese
10: Stephen Matthews and Virginia Yip: Aspects of Contemporary Cantonese Grammar: The Structure and Stratification of Relative Clauses
Part V: Southern Min Grammar
11: Tsao Feng-Fu: Semantics and Syntax of Verbal and Adjectival Reduplication in Mandarin and Taiwanese Southern Min
12: Chinfa Lien: Competing Morphological Changes in Taiwanese Southern Min
13: Ying-Che Li: Aspects of Historical-Comparative Syntax: Functions of Prepositions in Taiwanese and Mandarin

About the Author

Hilary Chappell is a senior lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at La Trobe University, Melbourne. During the last six years, she has embarked upon the first large scale typological study of grammatical diversity in Sinitic (Chinese) languages. She has carried out field work and research in China (2 years) and Taiwan (1 year), initially studying at Beijing University.
Her publications include a jointly edited volume with William McGregor entitled 'The Grammar of Inalienability' (Mouton de Gruyter, 1995) which has become a standard reference in typology on the topic of grammatical possession. She has also published over 30 book chapters and articles on topics in the grammar of Chinese languages.

Reviews

The thirteen papers in this volume were written by prominent researchers in Chinese linguistics and cover a remarkably wide range of data ... this book is definitely a must-read, since it provides significant insights into the historical development of Chinese dialects. It is a vital reassessment of the field, which shows that there is much to be learned by integrating historical study with dialectal investigation. Journal of Linguistics Chappell combines typological observations of Sinitic and non-Sinitic languages with general linguistic theory in a most satisfying fashion ... This is the first serious attempt to put several non-Mandarin varieties on the menu of the linguist-gourmand ... Chappell's volume is a very welcome, refreshing and exciting contribution. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale The first book in English to present cutting edge analyses on the grammar of little-explored Chinese languages and dialects ... the book is made accessible to a general readership in addition to specialists within the field. Folia Linguistica