This contrastive study examines the morphological characteristics of disyllabic constructions in Cantonese and Mandarin from the perspective of Prosodic Morphology. In an effort to interpret Cantonese word structures distinct from Mandarin, the author proposes a bimoraic foot model. The enduring linguistic conundrum of disyllabification (雙音化 shuāngyīnhuà) in Mandarin has increasingly captivated the attention of researchers. Not only do the majority of Mandarin words consist of two syllables, but disyllabic constructions also often serve syntactically as words rather than phrases. Building upon these observations, previous studies posit the existence of a disyllabic foot in Mandarin, functioning as a prosodic template in word formation. However, the applicability of the Mandarin foot to the morphological characteristics of other Chinese varieties remains uncertain. To address this quandary, this paper conducted a comparative analysis of the morphological characteristics of disyllabic constructions in Cantonese and Mandarin. This included Verb-Complement constructions (動補結構 dòngbǔjiégòu) and Verb-Object constructions (離合詞 líhécí). Notably, the criterion for determining the word status of disyllabic Verb-Object constructions involves assessing whether they can be followed by a direct object. This is explored through a corpus-based examination of Mandarin and a remote questionnaire survey involving Cantonese-speaking respondents. The findings reveal a more pronounced constraint on taking a direct object for Cantonese Verb-Object constructions compared to Mandarin, indicating a stronger inclination for these constructions to function as phrases in Cantonese. We interpret these findings in light of a disparity in foot structures, positing that unlike Mandarin’s disyllabic foot, Cantonese incorporates a bimoraic foot, comprising two morae within one syllable. This structural distinction implies that disyllabic constructions in Mandarin are more likely to function as words, whereas they are more commonly analyzed as phrases in Cantonese.

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Histories of the Mysore (Maisūru) kingdom, one of the most influential regional states in early modern South India, began to be written in plain Kannada prose no later than the first half of the eighteenth century. The kingdom survived India’s colonization and became one of the largest princely states under British hegemony. The kingdom’s histories were successively compiled or written in plain Kannada prose under the rule of the princely state of Mysore. This paper takes up two histories of the kingdom, namely “Details of the Past Development of the Mysore Kings (Maisūru Doregaḷa Pūrvābhyudaya Vivara)” and “Genealogy of the Mysore Royal Family (Maisūru Doregaḷa Vaṃśāvaḷi),” which were completed at the earliest stage of the kingdom’s historiography in the early eighteenth century. Though the two histories were written in close temporal proximity, their contents show many discrepancies. Regarding composition, the kaifiyat–like “Details of the Past Development of the Mysore Kings” comprises documents of various provenances and formats, whereas the “Genealogy of the Mysore Royal Family” records events chronologically. These content and format differences suggest that the kingdom’s early histories were written or compiled individually, without one influencing the other and independent of royal intervention. On the other hand, despite the differences between the two histories, their authors or compilers shared a common framework for understanding the kingdom’s historical development and gave much importance to detailing the territory’s expansion through military conquest. Given that other historical texts from early modern South India are more concerned with delineating the rulers’ authority and statuses in relation to other political and religious subjects above and below them, focusing on the kingship’s territorial dimension is rather unique and can be said to be a feature of the Mysore kingdom’s historiography.

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At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a Fulani Muslim intellectual, ʿUthmān b. Fūdī (d. 1817), and his jamāʿa (community) launched a series of jihads in Hausaland (a region approximately corresponding to present-day northern Nigeria and southern Niger) and its surrounding areas. As a result of their movement, a huge state—commonly called the Sokoto Caliphate—was established, with ʿUthmān at its pinnacle. As a political ruler and Muslim intellectual, ʿUthmān wrote many Arabic works to declare the legitimacy of his jihad and governance within the purview of Islamic law. Sirāj al-ikhwān fī ahamm mā yuḥtāju ilay-hi fī hādhā al-zamān (The lamp of brethren regarding the most significant thing needed in this era), written in 1811, is one of those writings. Although ʿUthmān quoted numerous passages in it from various works written by preceding scholars, most of those quotations are from Ajwiba ʿan asʾila al-amīr Askiyā al-ḥājj Muḥammad (Replies to questions from the emir Askiya al-Ḥājj Muḥammad) written by a Maliki jurist from Tlemcen, Muḥammad al-Maghīlī (d. c. 1505). It is well known that al-Maghīlī’s religious and juristic views substantially influenced ʿUthmān’s philosophy. ʿUthmān’s long and numerous citations from Ajwiba in Sirāj prove this. However, such influence does not mean that ʿUthmān blindly followed his predecessor’s views. Rather, through selective quotations and manipulative interpretations in Sirāj, ʿUthmān reorganized al-Maghīlī’s arguments to vindicate his own religious and political activities in the Sokoto Caliphate. In the present paper, referring to ten manuscripts and one published work, I have edited this significant writing, Sirāj. Considering ʿUthmān’s complicated way of utilizing al-Maghīlī’s words, we can regard this writing as an interesting example revealing how a West African Muslim reorganized religious and political knowledge received from the intellectual sphere of the Muslim world outside sub-Saharan Africa.

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