Recently, the spread of the COVID‑19 has made joint research difficult, and it has become difficult to train research successors. Today, I would like to talk about the situations of various joint researches over half a century and the results of fostering successors to research.

Since the Ming period, especially during the Qing period, the word guanhua 官話 was used in the sense of the spoken language that served as the standard language or lingua franca. This article shows through textual sources how these twin characters of guanhua emerged. First, the word guanhua primarily referred to the classical-style language of social intercourse used among intellectuals, and it represented dignity and status. The use of the word guanhua in the sense of lingua franca was first used chiefly in manuals giving the “correct pronunciation” of guanhua vocabularies, but in other texts terms referring to the spoken language of the north were used in this meaning. It can be seen in textual sources how the connotations of guanhua gradually underwent a shift from the classical-style language of social intercourse to a lingua franca.

In modern Chinese, the aspect particle “le (了)” is sometimes omitted when a verb classifier is placed after the object. This paper argues that the use of this unmarked sentence pattern without “le” is motivated by the context of “process descriptive sentences”. By comparing instances found in the CCL corpus of the sentence “V (le) O yì yǎn (一眼)”, this paper points out that the unmarked form is mainly used to describe the attendant behavior of the event occurring in the present within the novel, or to describe the instantaneous response to the event.

This article discusses the semantic function of the potential complements V-de/bu-liao. The semantics of V-de/bu-liao can be classified into 3 types, according to different scopes of possibility, and the opposition between dynamic and epistemic modality. The same verb or adjective can be used to express different semantics in different contexts. This paper suggests that the different ways of profiling are the root cause of its multiple meanings, rather than the semantic characteristics of the verb or adjective itself. In addition, the paper compares V-de/bu-liao to neng and hui to analyze their similarities and differences in the expression of different modalities.

The Proto Eastern Min final *iai, which was reconstructed by Professor Nicholas Bodman, should be revised to *yɑi. This final is derived from Proto Min **iɑi. The Proto Min to Proto Eastern Min phonological change **iɑi > *yɑi is parallel to **ɑi > *uɑi, but not to **ɑn/t > *an/t and **iɑn/t > *ian/t. This is one of the important historical phonological features that separates the Eastern Min group from the Southern Min and Puxian groups within Coastal Min.

This paper takes the Chinese translations in Middle Chinese of the Buddhist texts, which were mostly in oral form, as its source material and investigates one “Shi (使)/Ling (令)” construction from three perspectives: syntactic features, semantic aspects and the correspondence between the Chinese translations and the original language. The results will be threefold: (1) this particular form expresses the speaker’s strong wish; and (2) shows a deviation from the causative, expressing a change in circumstance. Also, this construction is separate; (3) this style reflects the Chinese oral language of the Middle Chinese.

This paper introduces Concise Chinese Grammar, a book on Chinese grammar written by Isaiah, a missionary of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing, and discusses the Chinese language as reflected in it. The most significant features of this book are the author’s explanations of Chinese grammar, the Cyrillic transcriptions and accent markings of Chinese characters. The paper analyses the book’s lexical and grammatical characteristics and states that features of the late Qing Beijing dialect can be found in the book. It then organizes the system of stress markings and makes an attempt to explore their general trends.