Typological variation across Mandarin dialects: An areal perspective with a quantitative approach

2018/08/21 by Pui Yiu Szeto, Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Language and cultural evolution

paper · doi:10.1515/lingty-2018-0009

openalex publication_date 2018/08/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21

Abstract

Abstract This study explores the range and diversity of the typological features of Mandarin, the largest dialect group within the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan family. Feeding the typological data of 42 Sinitic varieties into the phylogenetic program NeighborNet, we obtained network diagrams suggesting a north-south divide in the Mandarin dialect group, where dialects within the Amdo Sprachbund cluster at one end and those in the Far Southern area cluster at the other end, highlighting the impact of language contact on the typological profiles of various Mandarin dialects.

Citations

• World Lexicon of Grammaticalization
• Borrowability and the notion of basic vocabulary
• Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information
• Telling general linguists about Altaic
• Structural Phylogenetics and the Reconstruction of Ancient Language History
• Evolutionary trees from DNA sequences: A maximum likelihood approach

Cited by

• Mandarin Chinese [wikipedia]
• Taiwanese Mandarin [wikipedia]

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