AUTUMN QUARTER 2000 CHINESE 580 The Chinese Language: Description and Analysis Professor Marjorie K.M. Chan Dept. of E. Asian Lang. & Lit. The Ohio State University Columbus, OH 43210 U.S.A.

1. Required: The Languages of China. By S. Robert Ramsey. (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1987. Paperback.)
2. Required: The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. By John DeFrancis. (Honolulu: U. of Hawaii Press, 1984. Paperback.)
3. Required: Course Packet. Available from Cop-ez at Tuttle Park Place (2055 Millikin Road, 292-2219; open 24 hours, 7 days/week), located immediately north of the University Bookstore (Central Classroom Building).

   (Note: EALL 683 (Scripts of East Asia) that was to be offered this quarter by Prof. James M. Unger has been cancelled. Because DeFrancis' (1984) book is a required textbook for that course, it is currently also available at SBX under the course heading, EALL 683.)

Main Library Reserve: Textbooks will be placed on one-day loans and some supplementary resources will be placed on three-day loans at Main Library - check OSU Libraries' Course Reserves (by Prof/TA or Course) for an online list of books placed on Reserve for Chinese 580. (C580 reserved materials are listed online for the current quarter only.)

This is a survey course introducing important elements of the Chinese language -- its structure, dialects, and writing system -- as well as such topics as language acquisition, language planning, and language use in society. Taught in English, this course is designated as one of the Ohio State University's General Education Curriculum (GEC) third-level writing courses, under the auspices of the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing.

The course aims to give students an overview of important elements of the Chinese language and its use. Covered also are other topics concerning the Chinese language. As a GEC third-level writing course, Chinese 580 has a three-fold objective with respect to the intellectual growth and development of the students: (1) to improve their skills in expressing themselves with clarity both orally and in writing, (2) to develop their ability to read carefully and critically demanding texts, and to analyze and synthesize the ideas and concepts in them, and (3) to improve their research and library skills through individual research projects.

The course will be conducted through lectures combined with class discussions of assigned readings, individual and small-group assignments in class, and students' presentation of homework assignments and their individual research project. A mailing list for the class will also be used for dissemination of information and student-initiated discussions concerning topics brought up in class. Course work includes students' selection of a research topic, their bibliographic search in the library system for relevant materials, and a term paper (about 8-10 pages, typed and double-spaced) demonstrating ability to analyze critically the selected research topic. Students are also encouraged to make use of the World Wide Web to search for online materials, but don't rely solely on internet research.

1. Read and reflect on all assigned readings prior to class lectures and discussion.
2. Attend class regularly, and participate actively in class discussions and individual/group activities.
3. Turn in two homework assignments.
4. Present an oral version of the term paper project in the last week of class.
   (Prepare hardcopy handouts or transparencies, or prepare a digital file in PPT format (for a PowerPoint presentation), or in some other digital file format (DOC, PDF, NJX, etc.).)
5. Turn in a term paper (about 8-10 pages, double-spaced).
   Obtain approval of term paper topic from the instructor no later than Week 4. Submit a web-accessible version (HTML, DOC, RTF, NJX, PDF, or some other format) -- as per class decision (Autumn Quarter 2000) -- and an optional hardcopy. (A hardcopy would be practical if appendices are included that would otherwise require scanning of each page of the appendix.) All homework assignments and term papers are placed online in PDF format and internally-linked for class use.

Homework assignments (2)	20%
Class discussions/participation	40%
Research project (all phases)	40%
	------
	100%

1. Charts, figures, tables.

2. Chen, Ping. 1999. Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press. (Excerpts: Chapter 2 (pp. 7-33) and Chapter 11 (pp. 191-201).)

3. Chan, Marjorie K.M. 1998. "Gender differences in the Chinese language: a preliminary report." Proceedings of the Ninth North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-9), 2 volumes, edited by Hua Lin. Volume 2, pp. 35-52. Los Angeles: GSIL Publications, USC.

4. Hong, Wei. 1995. "An analysis of language changes in China since the 1980s." Linguistische Berichte 156:143-154.

5. Hong, Wei. 1997. "Language changes in Chinese: evidence from the service industry." Linguistische Berichte 167:23-31.

6. Supplementary reading distributed in class: Li, Charles, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: U. of California Press. (Excerpt: Chapter 1 (pp. 1-9).)

REFERENCES ON RESERVE

1. Chen, Ping. 1999. Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press.

2. DeFrancis, John. 1984. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: U. of Hawaii Press.

3. Norman, Jerry. 1988. Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press.

4. Ramsey, S. Robert. 1987. The Languages of China. Princeton: Princeton U. Press.

5. Select, short articles from:
   
   1. Journal of Macrolinguistics 1 (September 1992):
      "Language planning in China: Understanding and misunderstanding" (Zhou, Youguang), and "Sets of phrases associated with 'eating', and the cultural information they carry" (Chi, Changhai).

   2. Journal of Macrolinguistics 2 (December 1992):
      "The cultural meaning of Chinese symbolic terms" (Chang, Jingyu), "Name taboos and Chinese culture" (Ruan, Xianzong), "Numerals and cultural psychology" (Wu, Xieyao), and "Meaning beyond words: body language as seen in Chinese idioms" (Yang, Xiaoli).

   3. Journal of Macrolinguistics 5 (May 1994):
      "In and out of favour: attitudes to simplified Chinese characters" (Lavery, Mark), "On translating Jin Yong's martial arts fiction" (Mok, Olivia), "Why 'He Tongjian' changed her name" (Chen, Jianmin), "Euphemism and social psychology" (Meng, Guo), and "Trends in Chinese loan-words" (Cao, Congsun).

LINKS AND WWW RESOURCES

1. Online Resources for Compositions, Citations, and Documenting of Electronic Sources
   • OSU's Online Resources at Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing (CSTW) include:
     1. Resources for Students, 2. Resources on Research, and 3. Resources on Writing.
         Excellent resources, "handouts", links to tutorials, etc., to help students with research and writing.

   • Student Resources for Compositions and Sources: Their Use and Acknowledgement.
     Useful resources from Dartmouth College's Composition Center
     How to cite a webpage -- example:
     Marjorie Chan's Chinese 580: The Chinese Language: Description and Analysis <http://deall.ohio-state.edu/chan.9/c580.htm> [Accessed 1 September 2000].

   • On-line Resources for Documenting Electronic Sources
     Links and other resources from Purdue University's Online Writing Lab.

2. Library and Library-Related Resources:
   
   • OSU Libraries' net.TUTOR
     OSU Libraries' set of online tutorials, such as developing research skills in using WWW and other Net resources.

   • OSU Libraries' On-Line Catalog (OSCAR) and other Library Catalogs
     Suggestion: Start by searching under 'SUBJECT' in OSU's OSCAR for Chinese language -- bibliography. Our Main Library has several Chinese linguistics bibliographies (e.g., by Paul Fu-Mien Yang, Alain Lucas, Winston Yang et al., T. W. Kim and A. Wawrzyszko, Maurice Tseng, etc., including those in Chinese) that are useful for term paper topic selection and finding references. Such bibliographies (albeit some more dated than others) also provide valuable information on which journals you might check out for more recent articles relevant for your research topic. One bibliography that got overlooked in the cataloging under "Chinese language -- bibliography" is William S-Y Wang and Anatole Lyovin's 1970, database-generated CLIBOC: Chinese Linguistics Bibliography On Computer. (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press). Besides conducting online searches for sources, do take time to browse through the stacks in sections of the library with books and journals on Chinese language and linguistics. Needless to say, references in recent publications are useful for additional sources.

     Dictionaries are also useful resources as corpora for research. Our Main Library's collection includes specialized Chinese dictionaries of all kinds, such as dictionaries on classifers, verbs, or adjectives (or stative verbs), reverse dictionaries (hint: search under 'SUBJECT' for Chinese language -- reverse indexes for dictionaries organized based on the second morpheme in a compound; e.g., Hanyu Daopai Cidian (Han yu tao p'ai tz'u tien, MAIN/EAS Reading Room: PL1420 .H2985 1987), Han-Ying Niyin Cidian (Han Ying ni yin tz'u tien [A Reverse Chinese-English dictionary], MAIN Stacks: PL1455 .H335 1985), Daoxu Xiandai Hanyu Cidian (Tao hsu hsien tai Han yu tz'u tien, MAIN Stacks: PL1498 .T36 1987), and the reverse Chinese dictionary of verbal compounds, Dongci Nixu Cidian (Tung tz'u ni hsu tz'u tien, MAIN/EAS Reading Room: PL1235 .C46 1986), synonym (tongyi 'same meaning') dictionaries, antonym (fanyi 'opposite meaning') dictionaries, dialect (and bi-dialect) dictionaries and vocabulary compilations, loanword dictionaries, word frequency lists, etc. There are also such publications as Eugene and Nora Ching's (1977) 201 Chinese Verbs: Compounds and Phrases for Everyday Usage [MAIN/EAS Reading Room: PL1235]. There are also word lists, glossaries, and dictionaries in digital form that is web-accessible, and some of them are searchable online, as given in my Word Lists and Online Glossaries/Dictionaries for Chinese (and Japanese). Other online resources include Chinese character frequency lists that are part of Jun Da's Chinese Text Computing Project website (updated URL, 11-09-00).

   • MLA International Bibliography (part of OhioLINK's online Research Databases)

   • Journal of Chinese Linguistics: Index of Articles (1973- ).

   • Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association: Authors and Topics Indices (1966- ).

   • Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) [WWW (OSU Columbus Only)]

3. Other Resources and Links:
   • MC's Online Bibliography for Chinese 580
     This online bibliography emerged out of Spring Quarter 1999's offering of Chinese 580. It contains numerous English-language references for term paper topics and research.

   • MC: Word Lists and Online Glossaries/Dictionaries
     Links to Chinese (and Japanese) word lists, downloadable and online glossaries and dictionaries.

   • MC's Chinese Language and Gender On-Line Bibliography
     Fairly extensive bibliography plus links to other online resources; includes some articles that are web-accessible.

   • Marjorie Chan's ChinaLinks (Chinalinks.osu.edu -- Homepage with Table of Contents to 4 satellite pages and their contents)
     
     1. ChinaLinks1: General Resources for Chinese Studies: search engines, publishers, Asian studies associations and journals (with indices), etc.
     2. ChinaLinks2: Chinese Language Software & AV Programs: downloadable CJK fonts and decoders, IPA and Pinyin fonts, RealPlayer, etc.
     3. ChinaLinks3: Chinese Language and Linguistics: Chinese dialectology (including links to websites with Chinese dialect sound files), Chinese linguistics associations and journals (with tables of content/indices), conferences, etc.
     4. ChinaLinks4: General Linguistics and Internet Resources: general references (including link to the searchable, on-line Oxford English Dictionary and other dictionaries and references), linguistics associations and journals (with table of contents and/or indices), other internet resources, linguistic software and tutorials (including Stirling University's Online Phonology Course (on the sounds of the phonology of British English (Received Pronunciation)), and G. Dillon's Resources for Studying Human Speech), web-authoring tools, etc.

   • MC's Courses and Sample Syllabi
     Contains readings and references that may provide a handy source to look for research topics.

   • EALL 683: Scripts of East Asia.
     This course is taught by our Dept. chair, Prof. James Unger. The online course syllabus includes references to psycholinguistic studies.

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Photo for the C580 logo was originally from ChinaVista: Zigzag Bridge shrouded by morning mist in the Humble Administrator's Garden, an early 16th century Suzhou classical garden.

Copyright © 1997-200x Marjorie K.M. Chan. All rights reserved on course syllabus and on-line materials developed for the course.
There were 2,970 visitors between 15 October 1997 and 12 December 2001 (of whom 1,657 visited between 15 October 1997 and 2 September 2000).

Created 10/15/1997, and revised since. Most recent major revision: 2 September 2000 for Autumn Qtr 2000. Last update: 12 December 2001 for archiving. URL:   http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/chan9/c580-a00.htm