Chinese language

The Chinese or Sinitic languages ​​form one of the two primary branches of Sino-Tibetan language family, the other primary branch are the Tibeto-Burman languages. Chinese languages ​​are spoken today by about 1.3 billion people, of which most live in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China ( Taiwan). In many countries, especially in Southeast Asia, there are more Chinese-language minorities. The Chinese language with the largest number of speakers is the high Chinese, which is also known as " Mandarin" or simply as " Chinese language " or "the Chinese " or "Chinese".

Spoken in

• Sino Tibetan languages Chinese languages

Zh

Zho

• 5.1 Traditional font
• 5.2 transcriptions
• 5.3 Socio-cultural and official status
• 5.4 homophony, and homonymy

• 8.1 segments
• 8.2 Silbenbau
• 8.3 tonality

• 9.1 Word formation
• 9.2 pronouns

Several Chinese languages ​​, a Chinese font

In general, the term " Chinese language " the default language Mandarin Chinese ( Pǔtōnghuà in the People's Republic of China, Guóyǔ on Taiwan), which is based on the largest Chinese dialect group, the Mandarin ( Běifānghuà, bycatch Fangyan, Guanhua ) and essentially the dialect of Beijing corresponds. In addition, there are seven other Chinese languages ​​or dialect bundle, which in turn decay into many dialects. These eight units of the Chinese, according to the traditional Chinese terminology as dialects (方言Chinese, Pinyin Fangyan ) denotes, although the degree of their differences would justify each other Western- scale classification as language. Even within the major dialect groups of speakers of different dialects, the understanding is not always possible, especially the northern Chinese dialects ( Mandarin) to the northeast and the dialects are not mutually intelligible in the south. For the understanding of the spoken dialect boundaries by most Chinese Mandarin Chinese is mainly being used; regionally restricted also serve other dialects such as Cantonese as a means of communication.

The Chinese writing functions to a limited extent as a dialect general communication medium, because etymologically related morphemes are written despite different pronunciation in general in all dialects of the same Chinese characters. The following example may illustrate this. In ancient Chinese, the ordinary word for was "eat" * Ljɨk, which was written with the character食. Words such as shí ( standard Chinese ), sɪk ˨ ˨ ( Yue, Cantonese dialect), st ˥ ( Hakka Meixian dialect), sit ˦ ( Southern Min, Xiamen dialect) originate from it and are therefore also written食. Thus is the logographic Chinese characters - each character is in principle for a word - as a unifying bond that connects the speaker to the very different Chinese language variations to a large cultural community with thousands of years of written tradition. In an alphabetic writing or other phonetics this unifying function would not exist. This does not mean that the Chinese dialects differ only phonologically. So will "eat" usually not shí in standard Chinese, but Chi used that does not come from * Ljɨk and is therefore written with its own character ,吃. Other variants of the Chinese have, as long as they are written, for many words have their own characters such as the Cantonese冇mou ˨ ˧ " have not ". Therefore, and also because of grammatical deviations, also written texts are dialect across limited course. Until the beginning of the 20th century but did not exercise the use of classical Chinese, the written form was independent and dialect throughout China and also Japan, Korea and Vietnam was used at the level of written language is a unifying function.

Chinese languages ​​and their geographical distribution

The original area of ​​distribution of the Chinese language is difficult to reconstruct, because the languages ​​of the neighbors of ancient China are almost unknown and therefore can not decide whether Chinese languages ​​outside those Chinese states were common, have left written records; especially large parts of southern China seem in the 1st century AD outside of the Chinese language area to have lain. Already in the time of the Zhou Dynasty (11th - 3rd century BC) find evidence of dialectal division of the Chinese, which in the following centuries, considerably enhanced. Today most eight Chinese languages ​​or dialects bundles are distinguished, each consisting of a plurality of individual local dialects.

The following table lists the eight Chinese language or dialect bundle with their numbers of speakers and main circulation areas. The numbers of speakers are from Ethnologue and other current sources. A detailed listing of local dialects found in the article List of Chinese dialects.

The northern Chinese dialects ( Mandarin, Chinese北方 话/北方 话, pinyin Běifānghuà ,北方 方言, bycatch Fangyan ,官 话/官 话, Guanhua ) are the by far largest dialect group; it covers the entire Chinese language area north of the Yangtze River and in the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan and Guangxi also areas south of the Yangtze River. The dialect of Beijing, the basis of the standard Chinese, is one of the Mandarin dialects. The Wu is spoken by about 80 million speakers south of the mouth of the Yangtze River, the dialect of Shanghai here occupies an important position. Southwest it borders the Gan especially in Jiangxi province, with 21 million speakers and west of it, in Hunan, the Xiang 36 million speakers. On the coast, in the province of Fujian to the east Guangdong and Taiwan and Hainan, as well as in Singapore, the Min dialects are spoken, which include a total of about 60 million speakers. In Guangxi, Guangdong and Hong Kong, Yue is spoken by about 70 million people, whose main dialect is Cantonese with the centers of Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

The usual classification is phonologically motivated in the first place as the most important criterion, the development is considered originally voiced consonants. But there are also significant lexical differences. Thus, the pronoun of the third person are他tā ( the corresponding high Chinese form ), the attribute particle的de, and the negation不bù as features northern dialects, especially the Mandarin, but partly also of the Xiang, Gan and Wu dialects south of the lower Yangzi, which are influenced by the Mandarin. Typical features especially southern dialects, however, are the exclusive use of negations with nasal initial sound (about Cantonese唔m21 ), Kognata of ancient Chinese渠Qu ( Cantonese渠k ʰ ɵy ˩ ˧ ) or伊yī ( Shanghaiisch ɦi ˩ ˧ ) as a pronoun of the third person and some words that are found neither in northern dialects still in the Old or middle Chinese, as " cockroach", Xiamen ka ˥ ˥ - tsuaʔ ˥ ˥, Cantonese曱 甴ka ː t ˧ ˧ - tsa ː t ˧ ˧, Hakka tshat ˦ ˦ and "poison", Fuzhou thau1 ˧, Yue tou ˧ ˧, Kejia theu ˦ ˨.

The following comparison of related etymologically words of representatives of the major dialect groups illustrates genetic togetherness, but also the degree of diversity of the Chinese languages:

To designate

In Chinese, even a number of different terms for the Chinese language is in use. Zhōngwén (中文) is a general term for the Chinese language, which is used primarily for the written language. Because the written language is more or less independent of the dialect, this term also includes most of the Chinese dialects. Hànyǔ (汉语/汉语) is, however, primarily used for the spoken language, such as in the sentence " I speak Chinese ." Since the word汉/汉Han, is the Han nationality, the term originally includes all the dialects spoken by the Han Chinese. Colloquially, however Hànyǔ refers to the high Chinese, for which there is a separate technical term, Chinese普通话, Pinyin Pǔtōnghuà.

Relationships with other languages

This section gives a brief overview of genetic relationship of the Chinese to other languages ​​. In detail this subject is dealt with in Article Sino Tibetan languages.

Genetic relationship

Tibeto- Burmese

The Chinese is now generally regarded as the primary branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which includes about 350 languages, with 1.3 billion speakers in China, the Himalayas and Southeast Asia. Most classifications of the Sino Tibetan ask the Chinese compared to the rest of the Tibeto-Burman language family, a few researchers consider the Sinitic as a subunit of the Tibeto-Burman, pari passu with the many other subgroups of this unit.

The Chinese has numerous lexemes of its basic vocabulary in common with other Sino-Tibetan languages:

Apart from the common basic vocabulary the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman joins the originally same syllable structure ( as it is largely preserved as in the classical Tibetan and can be reconstructed for the ancient Chinese ) and a widespread derivational that comes into common consonantal prefixes and suffixes with bedeutungsändernder function expression. A relational morphology ( changing the nouns and verbs in terms of flexion) have the Proto - Sino Tibetan as well as the modern Sinitic languages ​​not formed, this type of morphology is an innovation of many tibetobirmanischer language groups by straddling contacts with neighboring languages ​​and by superposition of older substrate languages has arisen.

In other languages

Genetic relationship of Chinese with languages ​​outside of the Tibeto-Burman is not generally recognized by the linguistics, but there are some attempts to classify the Chinese in far beyond the traditional language families beyond macro- families. Some researchers, for example, a genetic relation to the Austronesian languages ​​, the jenisseischen languages ​​or even the Caucasian or Indo-European languages ​​, for which word equations as Chinese谁Shui < * kwjəl "who" = Latin quis be "who" used. None of these attempts, however, has been able to win the approval of a majority of linguists.

Lehnbeziehungen

Due to the thousands of years of coexistence with another genetically unrelated languages ​​, the Chinese and various Southeast and East Asian languages ​​have mutually influenced. So, in their hundreds of Chinese loanwords, often names of Chinese cultural heritage :册/册, cè, book ' chaek > Korean, Bai tshua ˧ ˧. These influences have had a particularly high degree in Korea, Vietnam and Japan, where also is the Chinese writing application and the classical Chinese has been used for centuries as a written language.

Even the Chinese itself has a large number of foreign influences. So some major typological features of modern Chinese are probably due to foreign influence, including the formation of a sound system, the task of inherited morphological education funds and the mandatory use of Zählwörtern. Foreign influence is also evident in the recording no fewer loanwords. From a very early period must include the word虎, hǔ 'Tiger' ( ancient Chinese * xlaʔ ) from the Austro-Asiatic languages ​​have been borrowed, cf Mon klaʔ, Mundari kula. The word狗, gǒu, dog ', the (206 BC to 220 AD), the older犬, quǎn displaced during the Han dynasty, was probably during the time of the Zhou Dynasty ( 1100-249 to v. BC) borrowed from the Miao - Yao. Also from northern neighboring languages ​​words were taken in prehistoric times, such as犊/犊, dú, veal ', which again is found in Altaic languages ​​: Mongolian tuɣul, Manchurian tukšan. Especially great was the number of loan words in Chinese during the Han Dynasty, as have also been adopted from western and northwestern neighboring languages ​​words, for example葡萄, Putao, grapes ' from an Iranian language, see Persian باده Bada. Difficult to prove are borrowings from the language of the Xiongnu; here is presumably骆驼/骆驼, Luotuo, camel ' to classify. Due to the strong influence of Buddhism during the 1st millennium AD penetrated a variety of Indian loan words into Chinese one :旃檀, Zhantan from Sanskrit candana ,沙门/沙门, Shamen, Buddhist monk '< Sanskrit Sramana. Only a few loanwords left the Mongol rule of the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), for example蘑菇, Mogu, mushroom '< Mongolian moku.

In the 16th century began a strong European influence, which was also reflected in the Chinese vocabulary. So Christian terms have been borrowed into Chinese during this period :弥撒/弥撒, Mass, Misa '< missa late Latin. Since the 19th century, names for achievements of European technology were applied, with the Chinese, however, compared to borrowing as much resistant proved to be about the Japanese. Examples are:马达/马达, mǎdá < English motor,幽默, yōumò < English humor. In some cases, loan words found on the way to the high Chinese dialects :沙发/沙发, Shafa < Shanghaiisch safa < English sofa.

A special appearance is a group of loanwords in particular from Japan, where it is not the pronunciation, but the spelling is borrowed. This is possible that the borrowed word is written in the original language itself with Chinese characters:

• Japanese革命kakumei > Chinese high革命, Geming 'revolution'
• Japanese场合baai > Chinese high场合/场合, chǎnghé, situation, circumstances '

Textualization and socio-cultural status

Traditional writing

The Chinese is written from the earliest known written documents dating from the 2nd millennium BC with the Chinese script. In the Chinese writing is - with certain exceptions - each morpheme represented with its own character. As the Chinese morphemes are monosyllabic, each character can thus assign a monosyllabic sound value. Contrary to widespread misunderstanding synonymous, but not homophonic words are written with different characters. So mean both Chinese犬,狗Chinese Pinyin quǎn as well, Pinyin gǒu "dog", but they are written with completely different characters. Some characters go back on pictographic representations of the corresponding word, other purely semantically based types do occur. But about 85 % of today's characters phonological information, and are composed of two components, one of which indicates the importance and the other represents a morpheme with similar pronunciation. So the character is Chinese妈/妈, Pinyin mā 'mother' of Chinese女, Pinyin nǚ woman " " woman " as meaning and Chinese马/马, Pinyin mǎ 'horse' as a pronunciation component. In some cases, a sign represents several morphemes, in particular related etymologically. The total number of Chinese characters is relatively high due to the morphemic principle; already the Shuowen Jiezi of AD 100 recorded nearly 10,000 characters; the Yitizi zidian from 2004 contains 106 230 characters, of which very many but are no longer in use or are merely rare spelling variants of other characters. However, the average number of characters that dominates a Chinese university degree is less than 5000; about 2000 are required than for the reading of a high Chinese newspaper.

Chinese writing is not uniform. Since the writing reform of 1958 are in the People's Republic of China ( and later also in Singapore) officially the simplified characters (simplified, Chinese简体字, Pinyin jiǎntǐzì ) used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, however, continue to be the traditional characters (Traditional, Chinese正 体 字, Pinyin zhèngtǐzì ​​or繁体字, fántǐzì ) used. Also on the textualization of other languages ​​that use Chinese characters, such as the Japanese, the Chinese writing reform has not been applied; in Japan but in 1946 independently simplified character shapes were introduced.

In addition to the Chinese characters were in China and some other writings in use. This includes in particular the Nüshu, a woman font used in Hunan Province since the 15th century. Under the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), the phonetically based Phagspa font for the Chinese was used.

Transcriptions

In addition to the Chinese characters, there are numerous based on the Latin alphabet transcription systems for high Chinese and the individual dialects or languages. In the People's Republic of China, Hanyu Pinyin is (in short: Pinyin) used as the official romanization for the Chinese high; another, especially before the introduction of Pinyin very common transcription system is the Wade- Giles system. There are no generally accepted transcription systems for the different dialects or languages ​​in the following they are therefore described by the International Phonetic Alphabet. Earlier forms of Chinese are usually high as the Chinese, thus transcribed in Pinyin, although this may not adequately reflect the phonology of earlier forms of Chinese.

Chinese Muslim (See Religion in the People's Republic of China ) wrote their language in the Arabic- based writing Xiao'erjing. Some who migrated to Central Asia, have begun in the 20th century to the Cyrillic script, see Dungan language.

Socio-cultural and official status

Originally, the spoken and the written language in China did not differ significantly from each other; the written language followed the developments of the spoken language. Since the Qin Dynasty ( 221-207 BC), however, texts from the late period of the Zhou Dynasty of the written language were significant, so that the classical Chinese as the written language of the spoken language became independent and general in written form a medium of understanding about the dialect boundaries also formed. However, the classical Chinese written language was used exclusively as a small elite, as a spoken language of the capital has been since at least the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) himself used by high-ranking officials of the dialect. When reading texts in classical Chinese, the relevant local dialect was used, some dialects had to use separate phonological subsystems, which differed from the spoken language.

Especially in connection with the spread of Buddhism in China folk literature increasingly in the vernacular (Chinese白话, Pinyin Baihua ) was drafted, which was normalized in the written application within China, to a certain degree and in with a few exceptions, such as the southern Min Lijingji written in the 16th century, based on early forms of Mandarin dialects. Maybe it was also in the spoken language of the 1st millennium AD to standardization.

Only towards the end of the Chinese Empire, at the beginning of the 20th century, dwindled the importance of classical Chinese; as an official language and literary language as it was replaced by the mid-20th century by the standard Chinese, the grammar, lexicon and phonology in particular much in line with the modern dialect of Beijing. Also for other dialect forms of Chinese Verschriftlichungsversuche been made, but has only the Cantonese have an established literature in Chinese writing, in some dialects also a way of writing was attempted using the Latin alphabet.

Even outside of the written language displaces the high Chinese increasingly local idioms, since the high Chinese is taught in schools across the country, although it probably replaced the dialects as colloquial languages ​​only partially.

Homophony, and homonymy

As the Chinese writing includes over 10,000 different logograms, the spoken standard Chinese but less than 1,700 different spoken syllables, the Chinese has much more homophonic morphemes, ie different meaning -bearing parts of words with the same pronunciation, than any European language. Therefore, neither spoken language nor Latin transcriptions correspond exactly to the written in Chinese character texts. Simplified transcriptions that do not mark the tones that can homophony appear even more pronounced than it really is.

In addition, there are also homonyms in Chinese, so different terms, which are referred to with the same word. Despite the very many logograms are also some homographs, ie words that are written with the same characters. Although most Chinese homographs are pronounced the same, there are also some with a different pronunciation.

Periodization

Chinese is one of the few languages ​​still spoken with more than three thousand years of written tradition. Language development can be divided among syntactic and phonological aspects in several phases.

The oldest written tradition through tangible form of Chinese is the language of oracle bone inscriptions from the late period of the Shang Dynasty ( 16th - 11th century BC). They are the forerunners of the language of the Zhou Dynasty (11th - 3rd century BC), the (上古 汉语, Shànggǔ Hànyǔ ) is called the ancient Chinese and the late form was preserved as classical Chinese to modern times as a written language. After the Zhou Dynasty, the spoken language gradually away from the classical Chinese; first grammatical innovations are already in the 2nd century BC They characterize the means Chinese (中古 汉语, Zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ ), which influenced mainly the language of popular literature. The time since the 15th century, including modern and contemporary Chinese (近代 汉语, Jindai Hànyǔ ,现代 汉语, xiandai Hànyǔ ), which serves as a generic term for the modern Chinese languages.

Typology

In typological terms, the modern Chinese shows relatively few matches with the genetically related Tibeto - Burman languages ​​, while show much more similarities with the directly adjacent centuries Southeast Asian languages. In particular, the modern Chinese is highly insulating and shows little flexion; the syntactical relationships are therefore predominantly expressed by the word order and free particles. However, should not be overlooked that even the modern Chinese morphological processes of word - formation and shape knows.

Phonology

Segments

The phoneme inventory of the various Chinese languages ​​has a great diversity; some characteristics, however, have become widespread; For example, the presence of aspirated plosives and affricates as well as in a large part of the dialects of the loss of voiced consonants. The Min dialects in southern China are very atypical, because they are very conservative from a historical perspective, from a typological point of view, however, they give a good cross section of the consonant inventory of the Chinese, so the consonant system of the Min dialect is represented by Fuzhou below:

These consonants can be found in almost all modern Chinese languages; most have several additional phonemes. For example, there are Yue labiovelars, in some dialects a palatal nasal ( ɲ ) and in Mandarin and Wu palatal fricatives and affricates. The high Chinese has the following consonant (in brackets the Pinyin romanization ):

Silbenbau

Traditionally, the Chinese syllable in an initial consonant (Chinese声母, Pinyin shēngmǔ ) and a final position (韵母Chinese, Pinyin yùnmǔ ) is divided. The final sound consists of a vowel, in which it can also be a di-or Triphthong, and an optional final consonant (Chinese韵 尾, Pinyin Yunwei ). This allows the syllable xiang in the initial position x, and decompose the final sound iang, which in turn is analyzed in the diphthong ia and the final consonants ng. The initial sound exists in all modern Chinese languages ​​always - apart from affricates - from a single consonant ( or ∅ ); however, it is assumed that the ancient Chinese had also consonant clusters in initial position. In the final sound let the modern Chinese languages ​​to only a few consonants; for example, only n in standard Chinese and ŋ; even here, however, the freedom in the ancient Chinese was probably much greater. Because of this very limited possibilities for syllabification homonymy is very strong in modern Chinese.

Tonality

The most obvious characteristic of Chinese phonology is that Chinese languages ​​- how many genetically unrelated languages ​​of neighboring countries - are tonal languages ​​. The number of tones usually are contour tones, varies in different languages ​​with each other very strongly. Around 800 AD, the Chinese had eight tones, but only three oppositions actually had phonemic significance. In the various modern Chinese languages ​​, the ancient sound system has changed, the high Chinese about shows only four tones, but all are phonemic, as the following examples show (see the article notes of the standard Chinese ):

The Cantonese dialect of Yue, however, has better preserved the ancient system and has nine tones, which are divided into specific categories:

It is generally assumed that the Chinese tonal system developed largely under the influence of eroded consonant at the end of a syllable; the ancient Chinese was therefore, in the opinion of the majority of researchers still no tonal language.

Morphology

Morphology

Basis of Chinese morphology is the monosyllabic morpheme, which in the written form of the language corresponds to a character. Examples are in standard Chinese, the independent lexemes大dà " be great " "go" and affixes such as the plural suffix - men们, řén人" person,"去qu. Exceptions are groups of two successive morphemes which constitute a single syllable. In some cases this is due to phonological changes in the meeting of two morphemes (so-called Sandhi ), as in standard Chinese那儿nà - ér > Nar "there", classic Chinese也 乎Ye- Hu>与yú, Cantonese慨 呀kɛ ː ˧ ˧ a ː ˧ ˧ >嘎ka ː ˥ ˥. Because the affixes of the ancient Chinese word formation morphology did not form its own syllable, including the derivatives discussed below for these exceptions. Whether the ancient Chinese also had polysyllabic morphemes that were written only with a sign that can not be resolved so far.

In the ancient Chinese morpheme corresponded in the vast majority of cases, by far the word boundaries. Since the time of the Han Dynasty new, two-syllable and bimorphemische lexemes were formed by composition of monosyllabic words. Many such compositions exhibit syntactic structures, which also can be found in phrases and sentences, why the separation of syntax and morphology is problematic. So many nouns as noun phrases are formed with an attribute and the following core :德国 人déguórén Germany - Human = " German " ,记者Jizhe " journalist ", literally " one who records ". Likewise, verbs can be formed by a combination of a verb with an object :吃饭Chifan " have a meal " from吃chi "eat" and饭fàn " meal ". Other compositions are difficult to analyze, for example朋友Pengyou " friend " from朋péng "friend" and the synonymous友yǒu.

Another means of education Wortderivation of both old and modern Chinese make affixes Represents the ancient Chinese had a variety of pre-, in- and suffixes, but these are often difficult to detect because they leave no or insufficient traces in Scripture. Especially frequently found a suffix * -s, could not be made with the both nouns and verbs (知zhi (* trje ) "know" >知/智zhì (* trjes ) ​​"wisdom" ;王wáng (* wjang ) " King " >王Wang (* wjangs ) " rule "). Various home and prefixes can be reconstructed.

Even the modern Chinese has some suffixes for derivation ( examples from the standard Chinese ):

• The plural suffix - men们primarily in the form of personal pronouns :我们wǒmen "we",你们nǐmen "their" ,他们tamen 'they'
• Nominal suffixes: -子-zi in孩子Haizi "child" ,桌子Zhuozi "table"
• -头- tou in石头shitou "stone" ,指头zhǐtou "fingers"
• 家jia - in科学家kēxuéjiā "scientists"

In various Chinese dialects, there are also prefixes, such as the prefix represented in Hakka ʔa ˧ ˧ - the formation of kinship terms: ʔa ˧ ˧ kɔ ˧ ˧ " older brother " = high Chinese哥哥Gege. Derivation or Inflection by change of tone set in modern Chinese is of minor importance, for example in the formation of the perfective aspect in Cantonese :食sec ˧ ˥ " ate, ate " to食sec ˨ ˨ "eat".

Pronouns

The personal pronouns have different forms of Chinese the following forms:

The early ancient Chinese differed in the personal pronouns the Numbers singular and plural, and various syntactic functions; so served in the 3rd person about 900 BC厥* kot ( JUE ) as an attribute之* tə ( zhi ) as an object, and possibly * gə ( qí ) as a subject. In classical Chinese the distinction of Numbers was abandoned, since the Han period, the syntactic distinction disappeared. For developed since the Tang dynasty new plurals, Deng now by affixes like等, Cao曹,辈bèi were formed. This system has so far remained unchanged in its fundamentals and is found in the modern Chinese languages ​​again.

Syntax

General

As Chinese languages ​​are insulating to a large extent, relations of words to each other primarily expressed by the relatively fixed word order. Congruence does not exist; no case be apart from the personal pronouns of the Old and Middle Chinese marks. In all historical and modern forms of Chinese is the position of subject - verb - object (SVO ) is predominant, except that in subjects pro- drop occurs:

In certain cases, such as topicalization and in negated sentences, the object can also be pre-verbal. Word order SOV can be found in various forms of Chinese, especially in negated sentences. So were the ancient Chinese pronominal objects often negated before verbs:

The SOV word order is possible in other contexts since around the 6th century, when the object of a particle (把, bǎ ,将jiāng, and others) is introduced:

In most historical and the northern modern variants of the Chinese the indirect object precedes the direct; in some present-day southern languages ​​, however, is the direct forward:

An important role in Chinese syntax takes the phenomenon of topicalization in which a pragmatic highlighted noun phrase is made from their canonical position to the beginning of a sentence. In the ancient Chinese Resumptiva were used in the extraction of objects and attributes; In modern Chinese these are no longer available. Typical of the modern Chinese also topics that are behind the subject are also those which have no direct syntactic relation to the following sentence:

Interrogatives are in Chinese in situ. Marking of questions with interrogatives by final question particles is possible in some ancient and modern variants of the Chinese:

Yes - no questions are usually marked with final particles; since the 1st millennium AD, there are also questions of the form " A - Not - A":

Aspect, tense, action type and diathesis

Aspect, tense and action type can be left unmarked or brought by particles or suffixes, sometimes by auxiliary verbs to express. In early ancient Chinese, these morphemes were exclusively pre-verbal; later in ancient Chinese were the most important aspect, however, the particles probably stativisch - durativische Ye and the perfective yǐ who stood at the end of a sentence:

Since the end of the 1st millennium AD and aspect particles are occupied that stand between verb and object; this position is widely used in all modern Chinese languages. Also at the end of a sentence and, especially in minutes, before the verb can be further specific aspect particles. The following table illustrates the structures that owns the high Chinese to express types of action:

Although all Chinese languages ​​have externally similar systems, the morphemes used on large divergences. The Hakka about using the preverbal particles ∅ aspect ( imperfective ), ʔɛ ˧ ˨ ( perfective ), tɛn ˧ ˨ ( continuative ), kuɔ ˦ ˥ ( " experience perfective ").

While the active is unmarked in Chinese, are the mark of the passive voice different options available. In ancient Chinese it was also originally unmarked and could be indicated only indirectly by specifying the agent in a prepositional phrase. Since the end of the Zhou dynasty structures formed with different auxiliary verbs such as见jiàn为wéi ,被bèi, Jiao叫and让/让ràng, although not displaced the unmarked passive.

Verbserialisierung

An important and productive feature of the syntax of the younger Chinese languages ​​is the Verbserialisierung which is occupied since the early 1st millennium AD. In these structures, followed by two verb phrases that are in a particular semantic relation to each other without formal separation. In many cases, the ratio of the two verb phrases is resultativ, so the second is the result of the first to:

Also common are serialized verbs, in which the second verb expresses the direction of the plot:

A similar structure is present in the so-called Koverben. Here are transitive verbs that can occur not only as independent verbs, but also can take over the function of prepositions and modify other verbs:

A special role is to take a different Serialverbkonstruktionen with the morpheme得, de or its equivalent in other languages ​​. In a construction which is known as complement of degree, de marked an adjective modifying a verb. The verb object, which is repeated downstream of the verb object, or the object is topicalized:

In some dialects such as Cantonese, the object can also be placed behind de.

In addition,得, de and the negation不, bù or their dialectal correspondences highlight the possibility or impossibility. The particle follows here a verb, indicating the result or direction of the plot:

Noun Phrase

Attributes

In Chinese, the head of a noun phrase is always at the end, pronouns, Numerals and attributes stand before him and be separated from it by a particle. These particles have different shapes in different dialects; in ancient Chinese it reads for example之zhi, in standard Chinese的de. This attribute may be a separate noun phrase: classic Chinese谁 之 国Shui Zhi guó " Whose land? " Modern Chinese这儿 的 人Zher de řén " here - Attribute particles - People " = " the people here ," Moiyen ( Hakka ) ŋaɪ̯ ˩ ˩ - ɪ̯ɛ ˥ ˥ su ˧ ˧ " my book ". If this is extended by an attribute, complicated chains of attributes can occur which may be considered typical for the Chinese. Frequently it is the attribute but not a noun but a verb nominalisiertes, optionally with supplements such as subject, object and adverbs. Such attributes have similar semantic features such as relative clauses European languages ​​. The following example from the standard Chinese, the core of the noun phrase is coreferential with the subject of the nominalized verb:

The head of the noun phrase can but also with other additions to the nominalized verb as its object, be coreferential. In most dialects this is not formally marked, but sometimes can be found Resumptiva:

The ancient Chinese could in cases where the head is not coreferential with the subject of the verb, the morphemes攸You ( präklassisch ) ,所use suǒ (Classic) :攸 馘" what was cut off ."

Measure words

A significant typological feature which divides the modern Chinese with other Southeast Asian languages ​​, is the application of Zählwörtern. While in ancient Chinese figures and demonstrative pronouns can stand directly before nouns (五 人wǔ řén " five people " ;此 人cǐ řén " this man " ), must in the modern Chinese languages ​​between two words are a measure word, depends whose election by the noun: Mandarin Chinese五 本书wǔ Ben shū " five books"这个 人zhe ge řén " this man ". Add to Yue and Xiang dialects measure words are also used for determination of the noun and the mark of an attribute: Cantonese渠 本书k ʰ ɵy ˨ ˧ pu ː n ˧ ˥ sy ː ˥ ˥ " his book "支笔/支笔tsi ː ˥ ˥ pɐt ˥ ˥ " the pen". The choice of the count word is conditioned by the semantics of the noun :把bǎ is in standard Chinese for nouns that denote a thing that has a handle; with所suǒ nouns are constructed which describe a building, etc. An overview of important measure words of the high Chinese offers the Product List Chinese measure words.

Language code from ISO 639

The ISO standard ISO 639 defines codes for the award of language materials. The Chinese languages ​​are supported by the standard with the language code zh (ISO 639-1 ) and zho / chi (ISO 639-2 / T and / B) subsumed. The ISO 639-3 language code introduces the zho as so-called macro language - a construct that is used for a group of languages ​​if it can be treated as a unit. In the case of Chinese languages ​​such factor is given by the common -written form. The subsumed individual languages ​​are: gan ( Gan ), hak ( Hakka ), CZH ( Hui dialect), cjy ( Jin ), cmn ( standard Chinese ), mnp ( Min Bei ) cdo ( Min Dong ), nan ( Min Nan ), czo ( Zhong Min ), cpx ( Puxian ), wuu ( Wu ) hsn ( Xiang ), yue (Cantonese).