Hilário's webpage

Welcome to Hilário de Sousa's webpage

Greetings! I am a linguist with a wide range of interests, with leanings towards the phonology, morphosyntax and semantic typology in East/Southeast Asian and Pacific languages. In this page you will find a list of publications (some downloadable), some manuscripts and presentations, personal information, and links to hobby things. Please come back and revisit this page! -As this page will continually grow through ongoing and future activities, and also me gradually digging through and recovering things from the past.

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Publications
Thesis
Manuscripts
EACL Summer School 2026 course: Yuè and the Sinitic languages of the Pearl River Region
Some presentations
Not my papers
Hakka
Me

Publications

de Sousa, Hilário. forthcoming. A grammar of Nánníng Pínghuà. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
de Sousa, Hilário. in press 2027. Grapholinguistics and the typology of writing systems. In Manns, Howard & Gaby, Alice & Margetts, Anna (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Linguistics (Routledge Handbooks in Linguistics). 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
de, Sousa. in press 2026. Pínghuà. In Chin, Andy & Kataoka, Shin & Kwok, Bit-Chee (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Cantonese Linguistics (Routledge Handbooks in Linguistics). London: Routledge.
de Sousa, Hilário & Bit-Chee Kwok. 2025. The affiliation of the three Zhōngshān Mǐn varieties: A review & some additional notes 三種中山閩語的系屬問題:回顧及觀察. Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics 中國語言學集刊 18(2): 243-319. doi:10.30184/BCL.202512_18(2).0004. pre-publication draft
de Sousa, Hilário. 2024. Some observations on the Cantonese lexical suprafixes. Languages 9 (10). 311. (Special issue "Typology of Chinese Languages: One Name, Many Languages", edited by Umberto Ansaldo & Pui Yiu Szeto.) doi:10.3390/languages9100311. paper, pdf; Open Access!
de Sousa, Hilário. 2023. Book review: Cantonese GIVE and Double-Object Construction. By Andy Chi-on Chin. Asian Languages and Linguistics 4(1). 101–111. doi:10.1075/alal.22021.des. pre-publication draft
Skirgård, Hedvig et al. 2023. Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances 9 (16). eadg617. doi:10.1126/sciadv.adg6175. paper, pdf; Open Access!
Phan, John & Hilário de Sousa. 2022. Southwestern Middle Chinese: Preliminary evidence from Hunan, Guangxi, and Sino-Vietnamese. In Trang Phan, John Phan & Mark Alves (eds.). Vietnamese linguistics: State of the field, 59–79. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society Special Publication 9. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. volume; pdf; Open Access!
de Sousa, Hilário. 2022. The Expansion of Cantonese over the last two centuries. In Zhengdao Ye (ed.), The Palgrave handbook of Chinese language studies, 409–440. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. doi:10.1007/978-981-16-0924-4_35. pre-publication draft
de Sousa, Hilário. 2021. The Expansion of Cantonese over the last two centuries. In Zhengdao Ye (ed.), The Palgrave handbook of Chinese language studies, 1–32. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-981-13-6844-8_35-2. pre-publication draft
de Sousa, Hilário. 2020. On Pinghua, and Yue: Some historical and linguistic perspectives. Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Asian Interactions 19(2). 257–295. doi:10.1163/26662523-bja10004. pre-publication draft
Majid, Asifa, Seán G. Roberts, Ludy Cilissen, Karen Emmorey, Brenda Nicodemus, Lucinda O'Grady, Bencie Woll, Barbara LeLan, Hilário de Sousa, Brian L. Cansler, Shakila Shayan, Connie de Vos, Gunter Senft, N. J. Enfield, Rogayah Razak, Sebastian Fedden, Sylvia Tufvesson, Mark Dingemanse, Ozge Ozturk, Penelope Brown, Clair Hill, Olivier Le Guen, Vincent Hirtzel, Rik van Gijn, Mark A. Sicoli, & Setphen C. Levinson. 2018. Differential coding of perception in the world’s languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (45). 11369-11376. doi:10.1073/pnas.1720419115. pdf; Open Access!
de Sousa, Hilário. 2017. Pínghuà 平話 dialects. In Rint Sybesma, Wolfgang Behr, Yueguo Gu, Zev Handel, C.-T. James Huang, & James Myers (eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics, vol. 3, 425–431. Leiden: Brill. doi:10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_00000332. pre-publication draft; book on Brill's website; Google Books
de Sousa, Hilário. 2016. Some non-canonical switch reference systems and the fundamental functions of switch reference. In Rik van Gijn & Jeremy Hammond (eds.), Switch reference 2.0, 55–92. Typological Studies in Language 114. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tsl.114.02des. pre-publication draft
de Sousa, Hilário. 2015. Language contact in Nanning: Nanning Pinghua and Nanning Cantonese. In Hilary Chappell (ed.), Diversity in Sinitic languages, 157–189. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723790.003.0007. pre-publication draft; Google Books; review of volume by Kwok & Lai 2018
de Sousa, Hilário. 2015. The Far Southern Sinitic Languages as part of Mainland Southeast Asia. In N. J. Enfield & Bernard Comrie (eds.), Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia : The state of the art, 356–439. Pacific Linguistics 649. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. doi:10.1515/9781501501685-009. pre-publication draft; Google Books
de Sousa, Hilário, François Langella, & N.J. Enfield. 2015. Temperature terms in Lao, Southern Zhuang, Southern Pinghua and Cantonese. In Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (ed.), Linguistics of temperature, 594–638. Typological studies in language 107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tsl.107.19sou. pre-publication draft; Google Books
Chén, Yùjié 陈玉洁, Hilário de Sousa, Jiàn Wáng 王健, Sing Sing Ngai 倪星星, Xùpíng Lǐ 李旭平, Wěiróng Chén 陈伟蓉, & Hilary Chappell. 2014. Láibǐxí biāozhù xìtǒng jí qí zài Hànyǔ yǔfǎ yánjiū zhōng de yìngyòng 莱比锡标注系统及其在汉语语法研究中的应用 [The Leipzig glossing rules and its application in the research of Chinese grammar]. Fāngyán 方言 2014(1). 1–13. pre-publication draft
de Sousa, Hilário 蘇沙. 2013. Nánníng Shàngyáo Pínghuà de yìxiē míngcí duǎnyǔ xiànxiàng duìbǐ yánjiū 南宁上尧平话的一些名词短语现象对比研究 [Comparative study on some noun phrase phenomena in Nanning Shangyao Pinghua]. In Dānqīng Liú 刘丹青, Léi Zhōu 周磊, & Cáidé Xuē 薛才德 (eds.), Hànyǔ fāngyán yǔfǎ yánjiū de xīnshìjiǎo — Dìwǔjiè Hànyǔ Fāngyán Yǔfǎ Guǒjì Xuéshù Yántǎohuì lùnwénjí 汉语方言语法研究的新视角 — 第五届汉语方言语法国际学术研讨会论文集 [New viewpoints on the studies of the grammar of Chinese dialects — Proceedings of the Fifth International Academic Conference on the Grammar of Chinese Dialects], 141–160. Shanghai: Shanghai Education Publishing House. pre-publication draft; the talk handout de Sousa 2010 below has glosses and free-translations in English.
(Nota bene: I have since discovered that the classifier is kɯ˥ instead of kə˥; the vowel ɯ only exists in this one word.)
de Sousa, Hilário. 2012. Generational differences in the orientation of time in Cantonese speakers as a function of changes in the direction of Chinese Writing. Frontiers in Cultural Psychology 3. 255. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00255. pdf; Open Access!
de Sousa, Hilário. 2011. Changes in the language of perception in Cantonese. Senses and Society 6(1). 38–47. doi:10.2752/174589311X12893982233678. pre-publication draft
de Sousa, Hilário. 2010. Book Review: The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea. By Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Pacific Affairs 83(2). 40–42. doi:10.14288/1.0044954. pdf; Open Access!
de Sousa, Hilário. 2008. The development of echo-subject markers in Southern Vanuatu. In Timothy Jowan Curnow (ed.), Selected papers from the 2007 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au. pdf; Open Access!
de Sousa, Hilário. 2006. What is switch-reference? From the viewpoint of the young people’s switch-reference system in Menggwa Dla. Te Reo 49. 39–71.
de Sousa, Hilário. 2006. Switch-reference in a dying Language: the case of Menggwa Dla. In Keith Allan (ed.), Selected papers from the 2005 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au. pdf; Open Access!

Thesis

de Sousa, Hilário. 2006. The Menggwa Dla language of New Guinea. Sydney: University of Sydney. (PhD thesis.) individual chapters; all in one zip

Manuscripts

de Sousa, Hilário. 2001. Noun phrase structure and the case marking system in Niuean. University of Auckland. Manuscript
(In memory of František (Frank) Lichtenberk, whose handwritten remarks can be seen in this manuscript. Also thanks to Diane Massam, who held on to a copy of this all these years.)
de Sousa, Hilário. 2001. Tonal pattern of suffixes in Awa 'simple' noun phrase. University of Auckland Manuscript
de Sousa, Hilário 2001. The classification of Ryūkyūan dialects. University of Auckland. Manuscript
de Sousa, Hilário 2001. Issues in the genetic classification of Northern Ryūkyūan languages. University of Auckland. Manuscript

EACL Summer School 2026 course: Yuè and the Sinitic languages of the Pearl River Region

Check before each lecture for the latest version of the slides!

Unit 5.2 SW Mandarin, others, and Cantonese writing (vid)
Unit 5.1 Hakka & Sleiyip
Unit 4.2 North–South axes & Sino-Vietnamese
(chart: Dynasties in the Lower Pearl and Lower Red River Regions)
Unit 4.1 Yue–Pinghua & the West–East axis
Unit 3.3 Kra-Dai influence (vid, vid, vid, vid, vid)
Unit 3.2 Yue & Pinghua
Unit 3.1 Middle Chinese finals, Early Cantonese phonology & lexicon/syntax (vid)
Unit 2.2 Middle Chinese tones & initials (vid)
Unit 2.1 Cantonese tones & suprafixes (vid)
Unit 1.3 Models of syllabification, Romanisation, Cantonese onsets & rimes
Unit 1.2 "Cantonese"
Unit 1.1 Pearl River Region, Sinitic languages

Some presentations

The following are some presentation slides/handouts.

de Sousa, Hilário. 2023. Some features of Nánníng Pínghuà. (Paper presented at Chinese Dialects Festival 中文方言论坛 Фестиваль диалектов китайского языка, Association for the Advancement of Sinology in Russia 俄罗斯推广汉学协会 Ассоциация развития синологии, 1–8 October 2023.) Slides (opens in Google Drive), YouTube video
de Sousa, Hilário. 2023. Some synchronic and diachronic views on the Cantonese lexical suprafixes. (Paper presented at International workshop: “Chinese dialect grammar in typological perspective”, Università Ca' Foscari, Venice, 27–28 April 2023.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2022. Nominal suprafixes and diminutive suffixes in Yuè and Pínghuà Chinese. (Paper presented at Linguistic Society of New Zealand Conference 2022, University of Otago, Dunedin, 8–9 December 2022.) Slides
Lau, Chaak Ming & Hilário de Sousa. 2022. The influence of orthographic repertoire on Written Cantonese across different jurisdictions. (Paper presented at Atelier "Systèmes d’écriture en contact en Asie orientale" / Workshop on “East Asian Writing Systems in Contact”, 35e Journées de linguistique d’Asie orientale / 35th Paris Meeting on East Asian Linguistics (JLAO35), CRLAO EHESS, Aubervilliers, 7–9 July 2022.) Slides, Extended abstract
de Sousa, Hilário. 2021. Some notes on Pínghuà. (Paper presented at Chinese Dialects Festival 中文方言论坛 Фестиваль диалектов китайского языка, Association for the Advancement of Sinology in Russia 俄罗斯推广汉学协会 Ассоциация развития синологии, 9–16 August 2021.) Slides (opens in Google Drive), YouTube video
Phan, John D. & Hilário de Sousa. 2021. *Southwestern Middle Chinese: Evidence from Hunan, Guangxi, and Sino-Vietnamese. (Paper presented at A state-of-the-field workshop on Vietnamese Linguistics, Typology and Language Universals, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Cambridge MA, 16–17 April 2021.) Slides (opens in Google Drive), video of 1st day (talk starts at 01 hour 46 minutes), video of 2nd day (ask me for Passcode)
de Sousa, Hilário. 2019. Some aspects and related markings in Nanning Cantonese and Nanning Pinghua. (Paper presented at The 1st International Workshop on Cantonese Syntax, Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, Olomouc, 27–28 June 2019.) Slides (opens in Google Drive)
de Sousa, Hilário. 2019. On Pínghuà 平話 and Yuè 粵. (Paper presented at Contact zones and colonialism in Southeast Asia and China's South conference, Pennsylvania State University, University Park PA, 10–12 May 2019.) Slides (opens in Google Drive)
de Sousa, Hilário 蘇沙. 2016. 语言记录中的语法描写. (Lecture prepared for ELDP Documentation Training, Yunnan China, Yuxi Normal University, 27 October 2016.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário 蘇沙. 2016. 语言记录中的语料库建立 Corpus construction in Language Documentation. (Lecture prepared for ELDP Documentation Training, Yunnan China, Yuxi Normal University, 26 October 2016.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário 蘇沙. 2016. Audacity 应用. (Lecture prepared for ELDP Documentation Training, Yunnan China, Yuxi Normal University, 25 October 2016.) Slides
Phan, John D. & Hilário de Sousa. 2016. A preliminary investigation into *Southwestern Middle Chinese. (Paper presented at the International workshop on the history of Colloquial Chinese – written and spoken, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ, 11–12 March 2016.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2014. Talking about smells in Cantonese. (Seminar presented at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Nijmegen, 1 July 2014.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2013. The Far Southern Sinitic languages – from the points of view of the Sinitic language family and the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area. (Paper presented at The 1^st Asian and European Linguistic Conference (AE Link), International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, 10 December 2013.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2013. What non-canonical switch-reference systems tell us about switch-reference. (Paper presented at the 46^th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Sveučilište u Splitu, Split, 18–21 September 2013.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2013. What is Pínghuà – some typological features of Nánníng Pínghuà. (Paper presented at The Final Symposium for the ERC project SINOTYPE "The Hybrid Syntactic Typology of Sinitic Languages", École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, 26 June 2013.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2013. Introducing more participants in Nanning Pinghua and Nanning Cantonese. (Paper presented at Workshop 'Structural Changes in Heritage Languages', Leeuwenhorst, Noordwijkerhout, organised by Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 23–25 January 2013.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2012. The Southern Sinitic languages at the edge of Mainland Southeast Asia. (Paper presented at Workshop "Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: The State of the Art in 2012", Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, 29 November–1 December 2012.) Slides part 1, part 2, part 3
de Sousa, Hilário. 2012. The Southern Sinitic languages at the edge of Mainland Southeast Asia. (Seminar presented at Berner Zirkel für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Bern, Bern, 21 November 2012.) Handout on word order
de Sousa, Hilário. 2012. The Pinghua Language. (Seminar presented to Bill Croft and others at École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, May 2012.) Slides part 1, part 2
de Sousa, Hilário. 2012. The typology of Sinitic languages from the perspective of Mainland Southeast Asia. (Seminar presented at Australian National University, Canberra, and at The University of Auckland, Auckland, February 2012.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2011. Some aspect and negation markers in Nanning Cantonese and Nanning Pinghua. (Paper presented at The 7th Conference of the European Association of Chinese Linguistics (EACL-7), Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Venice, 13–15 September 2011.) Handout
de Sousa, Hilário. 2011. Ideophonic compounds in East and Southeast Asia. (Paper presented at Association for Linguistic Typology 9th Biennial Conference (ALT9), University of Hong Kong 香港大學, Hong Kong, 21–24 July 2011.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2011. Language contact in Nanning – a city on the Tai-Sinitic linguistic frontier. (Paper presented at Workshop on ecology, populations movements and language diversity, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, 26–27 May 2011.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2011. Nanning Cantonese and Nanning Pinghua – their Tai-ness and non-Tai-ness. (Paper presented at 21^st Conference of Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, Kasetsart University มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์, Bangkok, 11–13 May 2011.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário 蘇沙. 2010. 南宁上尧平话「个 kə⁵⁵」用法初探 [Initial investigations into the usage of kə⁵⁵ in Nanning Shangyao Pinghua]. (Paper presented at 第五届汉语方言语法国际学术研讨会 [The 5^th international conference on the grammar of Chinese Dialects], Shanghai University 上海大学, Shanghai, 27–28 November 2010.) Handout, paper
de Sousa, Hilário. 2010. The grammar of Southern Pinghua – 'biased' diffusion in a complex contact situation. (Paper presented at Syntax of the World's Languages IV, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, 23–26 September 2010.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2010. The Southern Pinghua language and its love songs. (Paper presented at The Second Conference in Linguistics within the Birgit Rausing Language Program — Humanities of the Lesser Known, Lunds Universitet, Lund, 10–11 September 2010.)
Slides part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
de Sousa, Hilário & Jeremy Hammond. 2010. Echo subject in Southern Vanuatu versus switch reference – some comparisons of Southern Vanuatu and New Guinea. (Paper presented at COOL8: 8th International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics, University of Auckland, Auckland, 04–09 January.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2009. Southern Pinghua and its noun phrase structure — an introduction. (Seminar presented at EHESS, 11 December 2009.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2009. The changes in the language of perception in Cantonese. (Paper presented at American Anthropological Association 108th Annual Meeting, Philadelphia Mariott Downtown, Philadelphia PA, 2-6 December 2009.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2009. Changes in time in space and space in time – the case of Cantonese language and Chinese script. (Paper presented at Time in space workshop, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, 14–15 April 2009.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2009. There are NO universal grammatical categories. (Seminar presented at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, 16 February 2009.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2008. The language of perception in Cantonese. (Seminar presented at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, 6 November 2008.) Slides
de Sousa, Hilário. 2008. The local cases in Menggwa Dla and case-syncretism in the Sepik Region. (Paper presented at PIONIER Workshop on Locative Case, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Nijmegen, 25–26 August 2008.) Slides, handout
de Sousa, Hilário. 2008. Ideophones in Cantonese – the role of tones. (Paper presented at workshop Human locomotion across languages, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, 6 June 2008.) Slides

Not my papers

Brar, Poonam & Chico Q Camargo. 2024. The evolution of evolutionary linguistics. Journal of Language Evolution. lzae003. doi:10.1093/jole/lzae003. Open Access! My name is in their e.g. Figure 2 😅

Hong Kong Hakka

Me giving a speech in Hong Kong Hakka after the first 10 classes:

劉鎮發 Līu Zǐnfǎt (Lau Chun Fat)'s Hakka Romanisation:

Me

Nome/名/Nómi/Ingoa: Hilário de Sousa
Portuguese /i'laɾiu dɨ 'souzɐ/
(Macau ˨+˥*, SEP H+L*)
NZ English /hɪ'laːɹɪɐʉ/ (or /hi'lɛːɹɪɐʉ/)
Dutch /ɦi'laːɾijoː/
French /ilaʁjo/

Iou sâm 馬交-filo. Nō Tāmaki Makaurau ahau.

Google Scholar page. ORCID 0000-0002-3790-8245.

Board member of the European Association of Chinese Linguistics (EACL; co-secretary).

Associate member of Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale.

I can be reached at hilario arroba bambooradical ponto com

Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn.