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Another question... in the Story of Ah Q, Lu Xun has this passage:

这虽然也在他身上，而看阿Ｑ的意思，倒也似乎以为不足贵的，因为他讳说“癞”以及一切近于“赖”的音，后来推而广，“光”也讳，“亮”也讳，再后来，连“灯”“烛”都讳了。

That is, Ah Q taboos the word 癞 lài 'ringworm', then other words sounding like it, like 赖. But what is the connection to 光 guāng and 亮 liàng? He's illiterate, so it must be by sound or meaning, but I don't get it.

zompist wrote:That is, Ah Q taboos the word 癞 lài 'ringworm', then other words sounding like it, like 赖. But what is the connection to 光 guāng and 亮 liàng? He's illiterate, so it must be by sound or meaning, but I don't get it.

It's by meaning, from "光頭" which means "bald".

awer wrote:How do you distinguish between "i see an interesting book" and "i'm reading an interesting book" in chinese?

I see ... : 我 看見/看到/見到
I'm reading ... : 我 (正)(在)看/(正)(在)讀/(正)(在)讀著
I'm looking at ... : 我 (正)(在)看著
I've read ... : 我 看過/讀過/看了/讀了

(正)(在) = 正在/ /正/在

zompist wrote:A Mandarin pronunciation question... how are ri and er pronounced?

For er, my textbooks say [əɹ], but this site makes it sound like [aɹ].

For ri, that site has something I have trouble transcribing... could be [ɹ] or [yɹ] or even [əɹ].

Zhen Lin wrote:[aɹ] for 兒 sounds very Beijing-ese to me. [ɹ̩] (or perhaps more accurately, [ɻ̩]) for 日 is not unusual, I think. You might also hear a more vocalic off-glide.

Aha. My teacher and our audio CDs both have [ɑɻ].

I asked a friend of mine who has studied Chinese in Shanghai and Singapore how /s`ui/ was pronounced. He said something akin to [s`u@i]. I then said that our teacher says [kui] for /kui/, and he answered that that was correct. So what's the deal here? When is ui [ui] and when is it [u@i]?

zompist wrote:A Mandarin pronunciation question... how are ri and er pronounced?

For er, my textbooks say [əɹ], but this site makes it sound like [aɹ].

For ri, that site has something I have trouble transcribing... could be [ɹ] or [yɹ] or even [əɹ].

er - in my idiolect at least it is a perfect rhyme with -ar / -air / -anr. Thus 二 er is a perfect rhyme with 画儿 huar, 袋儿 dair and 半儿 banr.
In southern-accented Mandarin it either merges with -e (thus 二 = 饿) or it is a rhotacized version of -e.

ri - in my idiolect it sounds like zhi / chi / shi with the initial onset removed, i.e. a transition-less vowel.

Qwynegold wrote:I asked a friend of mine who has studied Chinese in Shanghai and Singapore how /s`ui/ was pronounced. He said something akin to [s`u@i]. I then said that our teacher says [kui] for /kui/, and he answered that that was correct. So what's the deal here? When is ui [ui] and when is it [u@i]?

It should always be [u@i] and never [ui]. gui is [ku@i] (and /ku@i/ as well, I think).

It occured to me that there seems to be no term to describe the verbs used to describe weathers in Chinese. They have a valency of one, but instead of having a subject and no object like intransitive verbs, they have no subject and a object, which is the noun of the weather.

Examples:

下雨 gloss: "descend rain"

颳風 gloss: "blow wind"

打雷 gloss: "strike thunder"

起霧 gloss: "start fog"

They also look like pro-drop, but unlike other cases of pro-drop in Chinese, there's no semantic nor grammatic subject that can be filled in. How should I describe their transitivity?

What's the definition of "subject" in Chinese? Is it absolutely confined to initial position? We know Chinese is topic-prominent. Could it just be that the grammatical subject is being demoted because it's actually the rheme?

If this verbs are actually transitive, then shouldn't some of the transformations applicable to transitive verbs (e.g. passivisation, bǎ construction) apply to them? Are there any transformations which apply solely to intransitive verbs and, if so, can any of them be applied to these clauses?

Impersonal verbs. The Thai example looks very similar to your Chinese one, where they're described as transitive impersonal verbs, unlike English where (off the top of my head) they're mostly zero-valency.

vokzhen wrote:Impersonal verbs. The Thai example looks very similar to your Chinese one, where they're described as transitive impersonal verbs, unlike English where (off the top of my head) they're mostly zero-valency.

In the section Weather Verbs, there's the sentence, "In some languages such as Mandarin Chinese, weather verbs like snow(s) take no subject or object." I'm very interested in reading that analysis.

Li & Thompson put them under presentatives, one of the few Mandarin sentence types without topics, and where the subject must occur after the verb. They compare it to

Yǒu rén zài dǎ diànhuà gěi Zhāngsān.
exist person DUR hit telephone to Zhangsan
Someone is making a phone call to Zhangsan.

Some closer parallels involving motion verbs:

chūlái yige kèren
exit-come PFV one CL guest
"A guest came out."

tàole sānzhī yáng
escape PFV three CL sheep
"Three sheep escaped."

dàole yipí huò
arrise [sic] PFV one batch merchandise
"A shipment of merchandise has arrived."

Moreover, it's not an inviolable rule that these subjects have to follow their verbs. In cases where there's a topic, they can precede, e.g.:

整天整夜雨都下得很大
whole day whole night rain all descend CSC very big
"It rained hard all day and all night."

linguoboy wrote:Some closer parallels involving motion verbs:

chūlái yige kèren
exit-come PFV one CL guest
"A guest came out."

tàole sānzhī yáng
escape PFV three CL sheep
"Three sheep escaped."

dàole yipí huò
arrise [sic] PFV one batch merchandise
"A shipment of merchandise has arrived."

But unlike the weather terms, these sentences can be inverted:
chūláile yige kèren
yige kèren chūláile

tàole sānzhī yáng (not táo?)
sānzhī yáng tàole

dàole yipí huò (not pī?)
yipí huò dàole

------

下了一場雨
xiàle yichǎng yǔ
descend PFV one CL rain
"It rained."

颳了一陣風
guāle yizhèn fōng
blow PFV one CL wind
"There was a gust of wind."

(thunder left out because it doesn't sound right)

起了一片霧
qǐle yipiàn wù
start PFV one CL fog
"It got foggy."

But not
*yichǎng yǔ xiàle
*yizhèn fōng guāle
*yipiàn wù qǐle

(Sorry for the poor translation)

linguoboy wrote: Moreover, it's not an inviolable rule that these subjects have to follow their verbs. In cases where there's a topic, they can precede, e.g.:

整天整夜雨都下得很大
whole day whole night rain all descend CSC very big
"It rained hard all day and all night."

But AFAIK, 得 can turn sentences into SOV order, so it doesn't tell much:

我兒子車開得很好
my son car drive CSC very good
"My son drives cars well."

車開得很好的是誰？
car drive CSC very good ATTR(?) COP who ?
"Who's the one who drives cars well?"

BTW, what does CSC stands for? Complement structure copula?

"把雨下 在/得/..." is a possible construction when talking about stuff like rainmaking.

Ran wrote:

Qwynegold wrote:I asked a friend of mine who has studied Chinese in Shanghai and Singapore how /s`ui/ was pronounced. He said something akin to [s`u@i]. I then said that our teacher says [kui] for /kui/, and he answered that that was correct. So what's the deal here? When is ui [ui] and when is it [u@i]?

It should always be [u@i] and never [ui]. gui is [ku@i] (and /ku@i/ as well, I think).

Oh? I really can't hear the [@] at all in some contexts, like nín guì xìng or duì bu qǐ. Why is this not written uei in pinyin?

Qwynegold wrote:

Ran wrote:

Qwynegold wrote:I asked a friend of mine who has studied Chinese in Shanghai and Singapore how /s`ui/ was pronounced. He said something akin to [s`u@i]. I then said that our teacher says [kui] for /kui/, and he answered that that was correct. So what's the deal here? When is ui [ui] and when is it [u@i]?

It should always be [u@i] and never [ui]. gui is [ku@i] (and /ku@i/ as well, I think).

Oh? I really can't hear the [@] at all in some contexts, like nín guì xìng or duì bu qǐ. Why is this not written uei in pinyin?

I should correct myself - more accurate to say that it is /u@i/, pronounced as [uei]. But it is certainly not [ui].

It is not written as "uei" because there's a special rule in Pinyin that says "uei" is always written as "ui" unless there is a zero onset, in which case it is instead "wei". The rule also covers "iou" and "uen" (which are written "iu" and "un", unless there is a zero onset in which case they are instead "you" and "wen"). This rule is the only source of "ui" (and "iu", and "un") in Pinyin. It is also why this rule works, since there's no existing "ui", "iu" and "un" to merge with.

As a further illustration, Zhuyin writes "uei", "iou" and "uen" as straightforward combinations of the symbols for u + ei, i + ou and u + en, onset or no.

How does Chinese render 'I don't know what to choose'? It must sound weird considering its word order and an infinitive involved...

Native speakers can correct me, but I think this would be "我不知道選擇 什麼。" (Lit. "I not know choose what".) Does that "sound weird"? If anything, I would think it's the Germanic version, with the object of the infinitive clause inverted, that's sorta off when you think about it.

I would use 我 不知道 (該) 選 哪個 (比較好), literally "I don't.know (supposed.to) choose which.CL (better)"

Using either or even both 該 and 比較好 is fine, but if neither is used then the sentence would be weird, can't really explain why though.

哪個 should agree to the noun it refers to, so if you're choosing a shirt, then you should use 哪件. If referring to people, then you should replace it with 誰 "who".

If you are choosing more than one among the possibilities, then there're two ways to do it: 哪些 and 哪幾個. As in the singular, 個 must be changed to the corresponding classifier for the noun, but 些 needn't. 誰 doesn't have an explicit plural, but you can just use 哪幾個, as 個 is also the classifier for people. 幾 is an indefinite number, and can be substituted with a definite number if needed.

The noun can be explicitly stated by attaching it to the classifier. My preference is to add it only when the classifier alone can't determine what I'm talking about, e.g. 些 and 個: 哪些隊友 "which teammates", 哪三個隊友 "which three teammates", or different things with the same classifier in the context: 哪件襯衫 "which shirt", 哪件帽T "which hoodie"

Also, I feel that 選擇 is a bit literary when used as a verb, it's fine as a noun though.

I'm not sure if 什麼 is right or not. I don't use it this way, but I have no problem understanding if someone uses it this way either. In the "I don't know what…" sentences, I use 什麼 to refer to abstract nouns, e.g. 我不知道該做什麼 "I don't know what to do", 我不知道他在說什麼 "I don't know what he's talking about".

Ran wrote:

Qwynegold wrote:

Ran wrote:

Qwynegold wrote:I asked a friend of mine who has studied Chinese in Shanghai and Singapore how /s`ui/ was pronounced. He said something akin to [s`u@i]. I then said that our teacher says [kui] for /kui/, and he answered that that was correct. So what's the deal here? When is ui [ui] and when is it [u@i]?

It should always be [u@i] and never [ui]. gui is [ku@i] (and /ku@i/ as well, I think).

Oh? I really can't hear the [@] at all in some contexts, like nín guì xìng or duì bu qǐ. Why is this not written uei in pinyin?

I should correct myself - more accurate to say that it is /u@i/, pronounced as [uei]. But it is certainly not [ui].

I was gonna show something I found on Wikipedia the other day, that said that it becomes [ui] when it has the fourth tone, but now I can't find it anymore. :/

Ran wrote:It is not written as "uei" because there's a special rule in Pinyin that says "uei" is always written as "ui" unless there is a zero onset, in which case it is instead "wei". The rule also covers "iou" and "uen" (which are written "iu" and "un", unless there is a zero onset in which case they are instead "you" and "wen"). This rule is the only source of "ui" (and "iu", and "un") in Pinyin. It is also why this rule works, since there's no existing "ui", "iu" and "un" to merge with.

So they just went for minimalism? I think <uei> would have been more intuitive.

It feels like I'm never gonna fully learn the pronunciation. :/ Like the other a friend of mine taught me that initial+o is pronunced initial+[uo]. I had no idea, and had not noticed it in any Chinese person's speech before.

Qwynegold wrote:Like the other a friend of mine taught me that initial+o is pronunced initial+[uo]. I had no idea, and had not noticed it in any Chinese person's speech before.

Actually I mentioned it on page 1:

M Mira wrote:I believe that's the result of a sound shift of non-glide, final /ɔ/ that started around the turn of the 20th century and the result has been the norm among the youth by 1949 but not the decision-makers, hence the discrepancy between pronunciation and orthography occur on both sides of the Strait.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade–Giles#Vowel_o

Labial consonants + o probably shifted to Cuo last, so both zhuyin and pinyin preserved older pronunciations that aren't exactly how Mandarin is pronunced nowadays.

o that isn't part of uo only appears in interjections now: 喔:o, 咯、囉:lo

Oh, I had forgotten about that. Or not incorporated it into my speech. 对不起！

Qwynegold wrote:
It feels like I'm never gonna fully learn the pronunciation. :/ Like the other a friend of mine taught me that initial+o is pronunced initial+[uo]. I had no idea, and had not noticed it in any Chinese person's speech before.

If you go by the IPA in the Pinyin page on Wikipedia, you'll end up with a good approximation of "accentless" Putonghua (i.e., perceived as "accentless" in the PRC).

Ran wrote:

Qwynegold wrote:
It feels like I'm never gonna fully learn the pronunciation. :/ Like the other a friend of mine taught me that initial+o is pronunced initial+[uo]. I had no idea, and had not noticed it in any Chinese person's speech before.

If you go by the IPA in the Pinyin page on Wikipedia, you'll end up with a good approximation of "accentless" Putonghua (i.e., perceived as "accentless" in the PRC).

Aha, I was thinking of looking through that carefully. Though I have been fearing that I will learn things wrong. I often make the mistake of pronouncing things the way I expect them to be pronounced, rather than listening to how others pronounce and imitating that. Btw, my friend said that finals with -n are realized nasalized. It was unclear if it was just [V~] or [V~n]. But judging from the phonology page on WP, it seems like this doesn't always have to be so.

Qwynegold wrote:

Ran wrote:

Qwynegold wrote:
It feels like I'm never gonna fully learn the pronunciation. :/ Like the other a friend of mine taught me that initial+o is pronunced initial+[uo]. I had no idea, and had not noticed it in any Chinese person's speech before.

If you go by the IPA in the Pinyin page on Wikipedia, you'll end up with a good approximation of "accentless" Putonghua (i.e., perceived as "accentless" in the PRC).

Aha, I was thinking of looking through that carefully. Though I have been fearing that I will learn things wrong. I often make the mistake of pronouncing things the way I expect them to be pronounced, rather than listening to how others pronounce and imitating that. Btw, my friend said that finals with -n are realized nasalized. It was unclear if it was just [V~] or [V~n]. But judging from the phonology page on WP, it seems like this doesn't always have to be so.

My anecdotal, unscientific impression is that [Vn] and [V~n] would be "accentless", [V~ɨ~] tends toward Beijing (I guess the more drawl-like you say it, the more Beijing it becomes), and monophthong [V~] would be perceived as non-Beijing and dialectal.

Same for [Vŋ], [V~ŋ], versus [V~ɯ~], versus [V~].