ERC SINOTYPE PROJECT

The hybrid syntactic typology of Sinitic languages (SINOTYPE)

The SINOTYPE project, which provides the impetus behind this series, benefitted from funding in the form of an Advanced Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) for the period 2009 – 2013.

The SINOTYPE team comprised seven researchers: the principal investigator, Hilary Chappell, five postdoctoral fellows and one doctoral student, in addition to two technical staff. Each team member chose an unknown Sinitic language on which to carry out intensive fieldwork and linguistic analysis during the 4 ½ years of the project, according to the following:

THE HYBRID SYNTACTIC TYPOLOGY OF SINITIC LANGUAGES: TEAM MEMBERS

Principal Investigator (PI): 1. Hilary CHAPPELL 曹茜蕾 (PhD, Australian National University, Chair Professor at the EHESS, Paris Xianghua, an unclassified Sinitic language of Hunan province

Postdoctoral Fellows:

2. Weirong CHEN 陈伟蓉 (PhD, University of Hong Kong) Hui’an language of Southern Min, Fujian

3. Yujie CHEN 陈玉洁 (PhD, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing) Shangshui language of Central Plains Mandarin, Henan

4. Hilario DE SOUSA 苏沙 (PhD, University of Sydney) Nanning Southern Pinghua, Guangxi 5. XuPing LI 李旭平 (PhD, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv) Yichun language of Gan, Jiangxi

6. WANG Jian 王健 (PhD, Peking University) Shangzhuang language of Jixi Hui, Anhui

Doctoral student

7. Sing Sing NGAI 倪星星 (MPhil, Cambridge University) Shaowu language of Northwestern Min, Fujian

During the entire period of the project, over thirty field trips were in fact made to China to carry out intensive investigations in situ of the languages targeted for description. Consequently, each researcher has spent up to a total of one year in the field in order to undertake a comprehensive analysis of a little-known Sinitic language with the goal of writing a comprehensive reference grammar, written in a functional, typological perspective.

Thanks to generous logistic support from the host institute, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), spacious premises for the exclusive use of the SINOTYPE research centre were found in inner-city Paris for the entire period of the project.

Motivation behind the SINOTYPE project

Standard Mandarin, or Pŭtōnghuà, has generally been the main, if not, only point of reference for Sinitic languages in typological studies in the West, while until recently it persisted as the primary object of analysis in Chinese linguistics in general. Therefore, the overall aim of the SINOTYPE project was to carry out the first large scale investigation into the linguistic typology of Sinitic or Chinese languages, broadening its horizons beyond Standard Mandarin to consider a set of major parameters in the grammatical make-up of this major branch of Sino-Tibetan. As outlined above, each team member was responsible for the description of the grammar of one language, based on extensive fieldwork in China. The scope of the project thus involved pan-Sinitic research not previously carried out in any depth in either China or the West. Over 50 publications have so far resulted from this research project, including the edited volume, Diversity in Sinitic languages (2015). Opening up this terra incognita in the form of this special series of grammars with De Gruyter Mouton that concentrates on the lesser-known Sinitic languages of China will reveal one-by-one crucial new insights into the typological profile of Sinitic languages and should substantially aid in providing a more fine-grained classification of this branch of Sino-Tibetan.

This new series is expected to increase linguistic interest in the Sinitic languages of China and dispel a large number of myths surrounding the use of the label ‘Chinese’, a term which continues to convey the rather erroneous view of a monolithic language, comprised of dozens of related dialects showing a high degree of similarity and uniformity in their grammar. This notion is reinforced in its turn by the persistent and superficial classification of ‘Chinese’ as an example par excellence of an isolating language.

One type of counterexample from our early findings shows that, quite to the contrary, the process of fusion and its outcome in portmanteau morphemes abounds in Chinese languages, while the use of tone sandhi and rhyme allophony to indicate grammatical features such as aspect, morphological definiteness and plurality exists to a far greater degree than has ever been supposed. Since, as already observed, most of the linguistic literature on Chinese concerns the standard language, Mandarin, the knowledge that is steadily being made available on Sinitic languages by the SINOTYPE team to the wider linguistics community will be certain to change immeasurably, if not irrevocably, the profile of what is known about this vast language group in the years to come.

H.M. Chappell Paris, 2017