MANDARIN CHINESE A Functional Reference Grammar Charles N. Li and Sandra A. Thompson UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles LondonUniversity of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Lid London, England Copyright © 1981 by The Regents of the University of California First Paperback Printing 1989 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Date Li, Charles N. 1940 Mandarin Chinese. Bibliography: p. 677 Includes index. 1. Chinese language—Grammar. 1. Thompson, Sandra A.,joint author. I. Title. PLUOTLS —1981——495.1'82421 ‘80-6054 ISBN 0-$20-04286-7 (cloth) ISBN 0-520-06610-3 (PBK) Printed in the United States of America 23.45.67 8 9(PBK) ‘The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ‘of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Perma- nence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ©Contents Preface to the Paperback Edition xii Preface xvii Conventions Used in Examples xix Abbreviations xxiii 1 Introduction 1 4.1 The Chinese Language Family 2 1.2 The Phonology of Mandarin 3 1.2.1 Initials 3 1.2.2 Finals 6 1.2.3 Tones 6 1.2.4 Phonetic Effects of the Retroflex Suffix 9 2 Typological Description 10 2.1 The Structural Complexity of Words: Mandarin as an Isolating Language 10 2.1.1 Morphemes Occurring with Nouns u 2.1.2 Morphemes Occurring with Verbs 2 2.2 Monosyllabicity: The Number of Syllables per Word, 13 2.3 Topic Prominence 15 2.4 Word Order 16 2.4.1 The Word Order Typology 16 2.4.2. Word Order in Mandarin 19vi CONTENTS 3 Word Structure 3.1 Morphological Processes 3.1.1 Reduplication 3.1.2 Affixation 3.2 Compounds 3.2.1 The Meaning of Compounds 3.2.2. Nominal Compounds 3.2.3 Verbal Compounds 3.2.4 Subject-Predicate Compounds 3.2.5. Verb-Object Compounds 3.2.6 Antonymous Adjectives Forming Nominal Compounds 3.2.7. Minor Types of Compounds 4 Simple Declarative Sentences 4,1 Topic and Subject 4.1.1 Characterization of Topic 4.1.2 Characterization of Subject 4.1.3 Comparison of Topic and Subject 4.1.4 Double-Subject Sentences 4.1.5 Comparison with Chao's Analysis, 4.1.6 Time and Locative Phrases 4.1.7 Further Examples 4.1.8 Topic as a Discourse Element 4.1.9 Topic and Coreference in Discourse 4.2. The Noun Phrase 4.2.1. Classifier Phrases/Measure Phrases 4.2.2. Associative Phrases 4.2.3 Modifying Phrases 4.2.4 The Order of Elements in a Noun Phrase 4.2.5 Definiteness and Referentiality 4.2.6 Pronouns 4.2.7 Reflexives 4.3 The Verb Phrase 4.3.1 Types of Verb Phrases 28 28 28 45 Ree 81 8 85 85 87 87 93 100 102 103 104 113, 16 124 126 132 137 139 a5 Auxiliary Verbs 5.1 Auxiliary Verb versus Verb 5.2 Auxiliary Verb versus Adverb 5.3 List of Auxiliary Verbs 6 Aspect 6.1 The Perfective Aspect 6.1.1 Where to Use -le: A Bounded Event 6.1.2 Where Not to Use -le 6.1.3 -le in Imperatives 6.1.4 -le Does Not Mean Past Tense 6.1.5 -le Does Not Mean Completion 6.16 Summary 6.2. The Durative Aspect 6.2.1 Semantic Types of Verbs and the Durative Aspect Markers -zhe and zai 6.2.2 Complex Sentences with the Durative Aspect, Marker -zhe 6.3 The Experiential Aspect 7 Sentence-Final Particles TA le 7.1.1 The Communicative Function of le 7.1.2 Where Not to Use le 7.1.3 Perfective -le versus CRS le 7.2 ne 73 ba 7.4 ow 15 alya 7.6 Conclusion m m 181 182 184 185 185 202 213 215 216 27 27 232 236 238 238 aut 313 317CONTENTS 8 Adverbs 319 8.1 Movable Adverbs 320 8.1.1 Movable Adverbs of Time 320 8.1.2 Movable Adverbs of Attitude 321 8.2 Nonmovable Adverbs 322 8.2.1 Manner Adverbs 322 8.2.2 Nonmanner Adverbs 328 8.3 Negation and Adverbs 340 8.3.1 Negation and Movable Adverbs 340 8.3.2 Negation and Nonmovable Adverbs 342 8.4. Adverbs and the bd Construction 349 8.5 Quantity Adverbial Phrases 352 9 Coverbs/Prepositions 355 9.1 The Function of Coverbs 356 9.1.1 Occurrence with Aspect Markers 360 9.1.2 Coverbs That Can Function as Verbs 362 9.2 Representative List of Coverbs 367 10 Indirect Objects and Benefactives 370 10.1 géi Obligatory 374 10.2 géi Optional 375 10.3 géi Forbidden 37 10.4 Apparent Indirect Objects 379 10.5 Explanation for the Indirect Object Facts 383 10.6 Benefactive Novn Phrases, and Preverbal Indirect Object 385 10.7 Other Functions of géi 388 11 Locative and Directional Phrases 390 11.1 Locative Phrases + 390 11.1.1 The Structure of Locative Phrases 390 11.1.2 The Position of the Locative Phrase in the Sentence 397 11.2. Directional Phrases with dao ‘to" 409‘CONTENTS 12 Negation 12.1 The Position and Scope of Negative Particles 12.2 The Functions of bu and méi( you) 12.2.1. Variation in the Meaning of Sentences with bu 12.2.2 Types of Verb Phrases 12.2.3 Resultative Verb Compounds 12.3 méi(yéu) Is Not a Past Tense Negative Particle 12.4 Negation and Aspect 12.5 Negating Some Element other than a Simple Verb Phrase 12.6 Summary 13 Verb Copying 13.1 Where Verb Copying Occurs 13.2 Grammatical Properties of the Verb-Copying Construction 14 The Imperative 15 The bd Construction 15.1. The bd Noun Phrase 15.2 Disposal 15.3 ba Sentences without a Subject 15.4 ba. . . géi 15.5 When to Use the bd Construction 16 The béi Construction 16.1 Use and Function 16.1.1 Adversity 16.1.2 Disposal 16.2 Structural Properties 16.2.1 Indirect Object Adversely Affected 16.2.2 The béi Noun Phrase Can Be Inanimate 16.3. bd and béi 16.4 Variant Forms as a7 a2 aan Base es 442 447 451x CONTENTS 17 Presentative Sentences 17.1 Existential and Positional Verbs 17.2 Verbs of Motion 18 Questions 18.1 The Four Types of Questions 18.2 Question-Word Questions 18.2.1 Question Words in Questions 18.2.2. Question Words as Indefinite Pronouns 18.3 Disjunctive Questions 18.3.1 Questions with Constituents Connected by haishi 18.3.2 A-not-A Questions 18.4 Tag Questions 18.5 Particle Questions 18.6 Differences between A-Not-A Questions and Particle Questions 18.7 Questions Serving as Subjects or Direct Objects of a Verb 18.8 Answers to Questions 19 Comparison 19.1 Comparative Constructions 19.1.1 Dimension 19.1.2 Subject/Topic and the Standard of Comparison 19.2 Superlatives 20 Nominalization 20.1 A Nominalization Functioning as a Noun Phrase 20.2 Nominalizations Modifying a Head Noun 20.2.1 Rel ‘Clause Constructions 20.2.2. A Nominalization Serving as the Complement to an Abstract Head Noun 20.3 The shi. . . de Construction 509 510 si7 520 $20 $22 522 527 531 532 535 547 554 357 564 369 sl 515 576 519 39 585 587CONTENTS 21 Serial Verb Constructions 21.1 Two or More Separate Events 21.2 One Verb Phrase/Clause Is the Subject or Direct Object of Another 21.2.1. The Second Verb Phrase/Clause Is the Direct Object of the First Verb 21.2.2 The First Verb Phrase/Clause Is the Subject of the Second Verb 21.2.3 The Clause That Is a Subject or Direct Object is a Question 21.3 Pivotal Constructions 21.4 Descriptive Clauses 21.4.1 Realis Descriptive Clauses 21.4.2 Inrealis Descriptive Clauses 21.5 Summary 22, The Complex Stative Construction 22.1 Inferred meanings 22.1.1 Manner Inferred 22.1.2 Extent Inferred 22.1.3 Bither Manner or Extent Inferred 22.2 General Structural Properties 23 Sentence Linking 23.1 Forward Linking 23.1.1 Forward Linking with a Linking Element 23.1.2 Forward Linking without a Linking Element 23.1.3 The Semantics of Conditionals 23.2 Backward Linking 23.2.1 Adverbial Backward-Lis Clause-Initial Position 23.2.2. Nonmovable Adverbs as Backward- Linking Elements xi g 8 598 598 607 6u ott 618, 620 623 623, 623, 627 628 631 632 633, 4 651 653 655xii ‘CONTENTS 24 Pronouns in Discourse 24.1 Zero Pronouns 24.2 Pronouns 24.3. Syntactic Constraints on Zero Pronouns References Index 657 657 675 on 683Preface to the Paperback Edition In the Preface to the hardback edition, we wrote: “It is in the hope that our effort may spur others on to further discoveries in the study of Chinese that we offer our analyses here.” In the intervening years, there have been many cogent and useful debates of the ideas and analyses put forth in the book, and much valuable work on the grammar of Chinese has appeared, We are not rewriting the grammar in the light of this new research at the present time, but we do wish to acknowledge some of the relevant discussion. We are grateful to Professor James McCawley for a lengthy and careful discussion of many points raised in his seminar on the structure of Chinese, which used Mandarin Chinese as a textbook. We are also grateful to Marie- Claude Paris,' Zhang Zhanyi? and Paul Yang! for their insightful reviews commenting on various issues addressed in Mandarin Chinese. The relevant literature on Chinese grammar which has appeared since our book went to press has been too extensive for us to list here. Six general studies, however, should be mentioned: Helen T. Lin's Essential Grammar for Modern Chinese (Boston: Cheng and Tsui, 1981), Beverly Hong's Situational Chinese (Beijing: New World, 1983), Chauncey Chu’s A Reference Grammar of Man- darin Chinese for English Native Speakers (New York: Peter Lang, 1983), Shou-hsin Teng's Readings in Chinese Transformational Syntax (Taipei: Crane, 1985), and Jerry Norman's Chinese (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). In addition, a number of excellent articles have appeared in Language, Studies in Language, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Journal of Chinese Lan- guage Teachers Association, Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, Computa- tional Analyses of Asian and African Languages, and Zhongguo Yuwen.xiv PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION Mandarin Chinese emphasizes the study of grammar in its normal discourse context. Some of the research mentioned above also takes this perspective, and at least one recent work shows very clearly how the choice of anaphor type, discussed in chapter 24, can be shown to be highly determined by the structure of the discourse in which the anaphor: are used.* We oursleves are continuing to probe Chinese grammar from a discourse perspective, and we look forward to more studies along these lines, Since some of the discussion of Mandarin Chinese has centered on the status of the examples we use, a comment on that point is in order. As is well known, Mandarin is a lingua franca, used by millions of speakers not only as a first language but also as a second language in much of China as well as among Chinese people abroad. As such, it is a language in which wide variation in usage is tolerated, since speakers all know that a number of languages and dialects influence the form of Mandarin. In such a situation, as we noted in the Preface to the 1981 hardback edition, it is to be expected that not all the examples we have used will seem equally “natural” to all speakers. Though Li is a native speaker of Mandarin, and all the examples are natural to him, some will sound strange to other ears. But every example in this book was either taken directly from a conversation in which we participated or checked with other native speakers for “naturalness”; each is therefore a possible utterance which some speaker might use or has used. More important, certain utterances which are unnatural in some discourse contexts are perfectly natural in others. If a native speaker is asked to decide whether an utterance is “acceptable,” the answer may depend on whether the respondent can place the utterance in an appropraite discourse context. In languages that have inflectual morphology, the “acceptability” of a given utter- ance taken in isolation may be easier to judge. For example, the English utterance “Sara lack confidence” is easily judged “unacceptable” independent of context because the verb is not properly inflected. But in languages such as Chinese, which has essentially no inflection, the notion of “acceptability” is much more controversial in most cases, particularly when the utterance is judged apart from its context. In general, then, the issue is whether ar utterance is appropriate in a given context, at least for some speakers, not whether it is “acceptable” in isolation. In anticipation of dispute over the appropriateness of some of our sample utterances, we provided a large number of examples to illustrate our analysis of ‘each construction in Mandarin Chinese. Our approach was designed to reduce the inclination to complain that an analysis is not supported because this or that ‘example doesn’t sound quite “natural.” ‘The paperback edition of Mandarin Chinese will greatly expand the accessi- bility of this book, especially for students. We reiterate our hope that it willPREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION xv continue to stimulate others to contribute to a deeper understanding of the ‘grammar of this fascinating language. Charles N. Li Sandra A. Thompson Santa Barbara, California October 1988 1. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 1, no. 2 (Dec. 1982) 2. Journal ofthe Chinese Language Teachers Association 19, no. 2 (May 1983) 3. Journal of Asian Studies 42, n0. 3 (1983). 4. Chen Ping, Referent tniroducing and Tracking in Chinese Narrative, (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1986).Preface The aim of this reference grammar isto provide, forthe first time, a description of Mandarin in functional terms.’ We attempt as much as possible to discuss the structural properties of sentences in the language in terms of the pragmatic situations in which they are used, that is, with an eye toward their entire comrauni- cative context, It is our conviction that only in terms of these functional factors can the grammar of a language be understood. This grammar is explicitly designed for students and teachers of Mandarin, who are not necessarily linguists. Thus, we have tried to minimize the use of technical linguistic terminology, and those terms that do occur in the book are carefully defined. On the other hand, most of the analyses in this book are original. [tis our hope, then, that linguists who are interested in a functional approach to the study of anguage will also find this book useful. We have attempted to present the empirical facts of Mandarin faithfully, describe the steps of our reasoning con- cisely, state the generalizations we arrive at clearly, and, whenever possible, provide a functional explanation of these generalizations, Needless to say, a grammar of any language is bound to be incomplete, and ours is no exception. Itis in the hope that our effort may spur others on to further discoveries in the study of Chinese that we offer our analyses here. It is worth noting that the written language in China is a heterogeneous mixture of the classical tradition based on the written literature before the twentieth century and modem colloquial Mandarin speech. Since the promulgation of Putonghua in mainland China, there has been a noticeable reduction of the classical component in most of the written material produced in the People’s Republic of China. Nevertheless, a “‘classical’* phrase or usage still makes its appearance here and there, We wish to make it clear that the classical language is not included in the scope of our analyses.xviii PRETACE We are indebted to the work of a number of linguists and scholars who have contributed to the study of the Chinese language. Some of our examples are drawn from their writings, and some of our ideas can be traced either directly or indirectly to our predecessors and contemporaries in the study of Mandarin. To all of them, we owe our gratitude, Where we have drawn on their ideas, we have acknowledged in the notes to each chapter. but we have not attempted to document the sources of our examples, which come largely from conversations in which we have participated and from our own knowledge of the language, as well as from the writings of other linguists and scholars. ‘The preparation of this grammar has been partially supported by a U.S. Office of, Education grant, OEG-G007701660, 1977-1979, and by the University of Cali- fornia, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. We are grateful to Phoebe Bissell, Donna Childers, Lila Margolis, and Nancy Warfield for their clerical assistance, to Li Ming-ming, Chang Hsiang-wen, Peter Pan, Wu Yenna, and R. McMillan Thomp- son for their help in discussing many of our examples with us, and to Wu Yenna, Barbara Fox, and R. McMillan Thompson for reading and commenting on the manuscript.Conventions Used in Examples 1. (0: x is an optional element. 2. (x either x ory y 3. *: an utterance that is either structurally or semantically unacceptable to native speakers. (x): to be acceptable the example must include x. (+x): to be acceptable the example must not include x. : an utterance that is odd but not necessarily unacceptable. a Owe Glosses and translations: a, Each Mandarin example has two lines of English below it. In the line immediately below the Mandarin example, we have attempted to gloss each Mandarin element with the clearest and most literal English equ lent possible. In the second line we offer a translation of the whole utterance into idiomatic English, attempting to preserve the “flavor” of the Mandarin utterance as much as we can. b, Mandarin elements may often have more than one possible English gloss. In cases where the choice of gloss is context sensitive, we have used the gloss appropriate to the given context. For example, dué can beXx ‘CONVENTIONS USED IN EXAMPLES slossed either as ‘much’ or as ‘many’; in a sentence such as “ te you én dub shi she exist’ very many book S/He has a lot of books. dui would be glossed as ‘many’ because it occurs with shit "book", whereas in a sentence such as Ga you én du gin 3sg exist. very much money S/He has a lot of money. dué would be giossed as ‘much’ because it occurs with gidn ‘money’ ¢. Mandarin nouns in general do not indicate singularity versus plurality We gloss all Mandarin nouns as singular nouns in English. d. Mandarin has no grammatical category of tense, which means that many examples could be translated as either past or present tense in English. Rather than offering both possibilities for each such example, we have chosen arbitrarily to give either a past or a present tense translation. In each case, the discussion within which the examples are presented should make it clear whether a given construction could equally well be translated with an English present or past tense or whether the translation given is the only one it could have. e. Mandarin pronouns make no distinction between masculine and femi- nine. We have glossed 1a as ‘35g’ and translated it as ‘s/he’. J. We have adopted the usage that is now conventional in linguistic scholarship of colons in glosses where it takes more than one English ‘word to gloss a given Mandarin word. For example: @ Gi) doxié 8, Pinyin: the transcription system we use is pinyin (literally ‘spell sound’), the official romanization system of the People's Republic of China, which isCONVENTIONS USED IN EXAMPLES xxi also the most widely used system in the media and scholarly writings on Chinese in the West (see the Introduction): 4, Syllables whose basic tone is third tone are given the third-tone diacritic even in environments where the third tone would change to second tone by tone sandhi. So, for example, we represent a word such as xidio-nidio “small bird, birdie’ with two third tones, whereas in normal pronuncia- tion, the tones should be xido-nido, reflecting the application of the tone sandhi rule changing a third tone to a second tone before a third tone. b, There are two types of neutral-tone syllables (see the Introduction). ‘Syllables of the first type always have the neutral tone, such as the aspect, markers -zhe. -le, -guo, and the sentence-final particles le, ne, ba, and so forth; these are simply represented with no tone mark at all. Syllables of the second type, however, may vary between a full-tone pronunciation and a neutral-tone pronunciation, This variation may depend either on dialect differences or on’ the type of sentence in which the syllable occurs. The best example of variation due to dialect differences involves. the pronunciation of the second syllable of many disyllabic words. For example, the word for ‘clothes’ is pronounced as yifi, with the second syllable having a neutral tone, by some speakers und as yifi, where the second syllable has a full tone, by other speakers, including most of those whose speech is influenced by Min and Yue languages. We have been arbitrary in representing such words: sometimes they are written with their full tone and sometimes with no tone mark. An example illustrating the influence of the sentence context in determining whether 2 syllable is pronounced with a full tone or a neutral tone is the variation in the pronunciation of shi ‘be’. In a simple copula sentence, for instance, shi normally has no tone: @ ~~ we shi Zhangsin 1 be Zhangsan Tam Zhangsan. ‘Asa marker of affiirmation, however, shi is typically pronounced with its ful falling tone: (i) we shi xihuin chi -ZhOnggud fan I be like eat China food It's true that I like to eat Chinese food.xxii CONVENTIONS USED IN EXAMPLES We represent syllables such as these with their full tones, with the understanding that in some contexts they will be destressed and have a neutral tone. cc, Exceptions to the generalization given just above are bu ‘not’ and yi ‘one’: not only can the pronunciation of these two syllables vary between ‘a full tone and a neutral tone, but each has different full tones, depending ‘on the tone of the syllable that follows. For the description of this variation for bu and vi, see Chao (1968:568). We have chosen not to ‘mark these two syllables with tone diacritics, with the understanding that their pronunciation varies according to the sentences in which they occur, 9. Hyphens: We have attempted to be consistent in using hyphens between syllables in a Mandarin word only when each syllable has an independent meaning of use. Exceptions to this convention occur only in the chapter on compounds, where the structures of compound words are being analyzed. ‘An example illustrating our use of hyphens is chiibdn ‘publish’, Although ‘chit means ‘put forth’ and ban means ‘board’, we write chibdin as one word ‘with no hyphen because the meaning ‘publish’ no longer has anything to do with ‘put forth’ and ‘board’, Similarly, a word such as xuéxido ‘school’ is written without a hyphen because, although xué ‘leam, study’ may occur independently, xido ‘school’ may not. A word like kan-jidn ‘see-perceive’, ‘on the other hand, is written with a hyphen because the two parts can function independently. It is impossible to be totally consistent on this ‘matter, but we have tried to follow this principle tothe best of our ability 10. ~: This is a symbol used to gloss an undefinable object of a verb-object, compound, An example is bang-méng ‘help-~ = to help’. The second syllable mang functions as an object of the verb bang *help'; but mang does not have any independent semantic content within the compound bdng- mang.Abbreviations ABRREVIATION ASSOC BA BEI cL COMP CRS csc DO. DUR EXP FW GEN 10. NOM NP ORD PEV PL Q REx RF RVC SA 35g TeRM associative (-de) ba bei classifier comparative Currently Relevant State (le) complex stative construction (de) direct object durative aspect (-zhe, zai) experiential aspect (-guo) Friendly Waming (ou) genitive (-de) indirect object nominalizer (de) ‘noun phrase ordinalizer (di-) perfective aspect (-le) plural (-men, -xie) question (ma) Response to Expectation (ne) Reduce Forcefulness (a/ya) resultative verb compound Solicit Agreement (ba) third person singular pronoun Wuere IntropuceD, Discussep, AND DEFINED 422 15 16 421 19 WW 2 4.3.1.3 62 63 14 422 10 20 42 3.1.24 61 3.1.2.C, 4.2.1 18.5 12 15 323.4 13CHAPTER 1 Introduction ‘The word Mandarin denoting the major dialect family of China is an established linguistic term in the West. In popular as well as linguistic usage, the term also represents the speech of Beijing, which for centuries has been recognized as the standard language of China because of the political and cultural significarce of that city. China did not officially establish a common language for the nation until 1955, however, when the government of the People’s Republic of China pro- claimed a national language embodying the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect, the grammar of northem Mandarin, and the vocabulary of modem vernacular literature. This national language has since been known as Piitdnghud, which means the ‘common language’. The style and vocabulary of Putonghua aim at being close to the language of workers and farmers. During the early fifties, Taiwan also adopted the policy of promoting a uniform language based on the Beijing dialect; in Taiwan it is called Guévi, literally ‘national language’. Our term Mandarin is meant to include both Putonghua and Guoyy. ‘Since both Putonghua and Guoyu are based on the Beijing dialect, they are quite similar except in certain areas of vocabulary. which can be attributed in part to the political differences between the maintand and Taiwan. On the other hand, both Putonghua and Guoyu are far from being “‘uniform,"* for China has a large population spread over a vast geographical area, and consequently numerous other dialects inevitably influence and affect the versions of Putonghua and Guoyu spoken by people from different regions. Thus, a truly uniform language in a country such as China can exist only in theory. notin reality. This is not to down- play the success of Putonghua and Guoyu in facilitating communication among speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects and in promoting universal education. Nevertheless, it is important for us to point out that when one speaks of2 INTRODUCTION “the language’’of China, one refers merely to an ideal, and that there will always be some variation between “the Mandarin language’” of one person and “the Mandarin language" of another person. What we are attempting to describe and explain in this book is a Mandarin tanguage that is as devord of the idiosyncracies of individual speakers as possible. We intend the generalizations and explanations offered in this book to be applicable to the speech of all speakers of Putonghua and Guoyu, even if some of the illustrative examples may strike some readers as slightly odd. Each example that is not marked with an asterisk (*) is something that could be or has been said by at least some speakers of Mandarin. Whenever a generalization or an explanation may be affected by dialectal interference, we try to point it out. Since the dialect situation in China is complex, we will briefly describe it here 1.1 The Chinese Language Family It's traditional to speak of the different varieties of Chinese as “‘dialects,”* even though they may be different from one another to the point of being mutually unintelligible." It is often pointed out, for example, that Cantonese and Mandarin differ from each other roughly as the Romance “languages” Portuguese and Rumanian do. On the one hand, because Portuguese and Rumanian are spoken in different countries, they are referred to as different ““languages.”” On the other hand, because Cantonese and Mandarin are spoken in the same country, they are called different “‘dialects."" We will continue the tradition and refer to them as dialects, ‘The classification of the varieties of Chinese into dialects is based primarily on a comparison of their sound structure. The classification into seven major dialect, ‘groups as shown in table 1.1 is now generally accepted (see Egerod (1967]). The map shows the geographical spread and the locales of the representatives of the different dialect groups, as well as some major cities in China, The greatest variations in terms of phonology, syntax, and vocabulary occur in the southem region of the country. The dialects of the Mandarin group, divided into four subgroups, not only can claim the largest percentage of China's popula- tion, but also have a higher degree of mutual intelligibility The Chinese language family is genetically classified as an independent branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The other major branches of the Sino-Tibetan language family are Tibetan, the languages of Tibet; Lolo-Burmese, the languages of Burma and scattered areas in Southern China, Southeast Asia, and the Tibetan borderland; and Karen, the languages of lower Burma and the southern border region between Thailand and Burma. Thus, geographically. the Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken in East Asia and Southeast Asia, with Chinese covering most of the East Asian mainland,