Newest Trends in the Study of Grammaticalization and Lexicalization in Chinese

Description

Grammaticalization and lexicalization have been two major issues in the study of diachronic change in the past few decades. Drawing evidence from Western languages, researchers have uncovered a number of characteristics of the process of grammaticalization and lexicalization, as well as the relationship between the two. However, the question remains whether or not those characteristics are applicable to genetically unrelated and typologically different languages, such as Chinese. The contributors of this volume attempt to answer just this question. Based on Chinese historical data from the past three thousand years, five articles in the volume investigate the development of a certain grammatical category: the definite article (M. Fang), modal verbs of volition (A. Peyraube and M. Li), the classifier class (J.Z. Xing), the repeater class (C. Zhang), and the process of lexicalization (X. Dong), while the remaining four articles are case studies of unique grammatical words which have all undergone a complicated process of grammaticalization and some involved lexicalization: the sentence particle ye (Q. Chen), the versatile directional verb lái (C. Liu), the degree adverb hen (M. Liu and C. Chang), and the giving verb gei (F. Tsao). All these studies have identified tendencies of diachronic change in Chinese and some of them have also revealed certain typological characteristics that Chinese has compared to other languages. Introduction The development of the Chinese aspectual sentence-final marker yě The emergence of a definite article in Beijing Mandarin: The evolution of the proximal demonstrative zhè The grammaticalization of the directional verb ‘lái’: A construction grammar approach The degree-evaluative construction: Grammaticalization in constructionalization The semantic historical development of modal verbs of volition in Chinese Semantic change in the grammaticalization of classifiers in Mandarin Chinese The repeater in Chinese and other languages Lexicalization in the history of the Chinese language Argument structure change, reanalysis and lexicalization: Grammaticalization of transitive verbs into ditransitive verbs in Chinese, Japanese and English Subject index