Typologization of synchronic and diachronic processes in Southern Min (a Sinitic language) – TYSOMIN

The TYSOMIN project is an extension of the DIAMIN project, which received funding from the ANR between 2009 and 2011. TYSOMIN represents the first large-scale investigation of diachronic and typological change in syntax of a Sinitic language, or Chinese dialect, other than Mandarin, namely Southern Min. Southern Min, perhaps better known in the West by its demotic name of Hokkien, is a Sinitic language with approximately 40 million speakers in China. It is not only the lingua franca of the southern part of Fujian Province, but is also the majority language in Taiwan, spoken as the first language of 73% of the population on the island, or approximately 18 million people. Southern Min is claimed to be one of the most archaic of Sinitic languages, probably splitting off from mainstream Chinese during the transitional period of the Han dynasty, approximately two millennia ago.

The proposed TYSOMIN project is to be conducted by an international team of French and Taiwanese scholars, as was the case for DIAMIN. The project will involve the analysis of the earliest extant grammars and vocabularies of Southern Min, written by Western missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It will also involve analysing operas from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries Li Jing Ji, Li Zhi Ji, Jin Hua Nü, Su Liuniang, and Tong chuang qin shu ji, whose dialogues are in Southern Min and that have not been systematically studied under the DIAMIN project. In addition, various pathways of grammatical change will be examined, including processes of analogy, reanalysis involving grammaticalization and lexicalization, exaptation, and external borrowing through language contact. Venturing into this terra incognita is expected to reveal crucial new insights not only about the evolution of Sinitic languages, but also about the universals of language change.

Studies carried out by the DIAMIN project team members have treated the following topics in detail. Diachronic pathways for: comitative markers; coordinative, and object marking constructions; verbs of giving and their relation to datives, purposives, causatives, and passives; modality; the lexical field of “surpass” and the comparative construction; and for verba dicendi and complex sentences with complementizers. Such studies have laid a very solid foundation for the newly proposed TYSOMIN project, placing us in the ideal position to undertake a large-scale study of several more important syntactic changes and on synchronic typological studies of Southern Min. Seven new topics will be investigated by TYSOMIN. They are: pronominal paradigms for personal pronouns; the internal make-up of a determiner phrase and constraints on the co-occurrence of its elements; the development of the partitive construction and of the classifiers system; various kinds of negation; kinds of quantifier and constructional types; the exploration of spatial dimensions; and case studies of the multiple functions of robust particles.