A case study of grammaticalization: The grammatical status of 'de', 'le', and 'ba' in the history of Chinese.

摘要

This dissertation studies the grammatical status of three Chinese linguistic forms, DE, LE, and BA in different stages of the language. The bulk of the data in this study consists of, though it is not limited to, the texts of Mengzi;This study finds that it is the interaction between syntax and semantics which triggered the given grammaticalizations: the reanalyses were all motivated by either semantic or syntactic similarities, or both. Thus, none of the changes under investigation is purely syntactic in nature. It is, therefore, contended that purely syntactic change is rare. In addition, this study also finds that the change of the grammatical status of a given sign happens in a gradual manner and takes a long period of time. While an instance of use of a given sign may occur in an abrupt manner, the grammaticalization of a given sign typically lasts for hundreds of years and results in different uses with different grammatical status. It is, therefore, also contended that an important consequence of grammaticalization is diversified uses of a given sign. It is further suggested that once a sign embarks on the course of grammaticalization, the phenomenon of diversity may never disappear. ftn;The history of these forms constitutes a case study of grammaticalization. In older stages of the language, all three were full-fledged verbs. But in Modern Mandarin their dominant uses are either as affixes or as prepositions. This dissertation attempts to identify their historical pathways of development in the last 2,000 years. In addition, text-count methodology and syntactic diagnostics are used to determine their grammatical properties in different historical periods. Efforts are also made to uncover the motivation for syntactic reanalyses in view of a given syntactic paradigm.