Expressing perfectivity in the history of pre-Song Chinese.

详细信息   

• 作者：Wang ; Zhirong.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2003
• 导师：Cheng, Tsai-Fa
• 毕业院校：The University of Wisconsin
• 专业：Language, Linguistics.;History, Asia, Australia and Oceania.
• CBH：3101431
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：13425199
• Pages：268

文摘

In modern Chinese, the concept of perfectivity can be expressed by attaching the perfective particle -le to the verb. It is known that the modern perfective particle -le originated from the verb liao in the V(O)-liao construction. Before the appearance of the V(O)-liao, the word yi was frequently used at this complement position. This dissertation investigates the origin and development of the V(O)-yi construction in pre-Song Chinese by examining the evolution of the words ji, bi, yi, jing, qi, liao and que, which have more or less contributed to the final formation of the V(O)-yi and, subsequently, the V(O)-liao construction in the history of the Chinese language. Materials used in this study include historical documents, translated Buddhist texts, fiction and poetry from various periods.;The study reveals that the concept of perfectivity in Chinese was initially expressed by completive verbs such as ji and yi meaning "to finish; to end" in pre-Qin Chinese. The semantic implications of these verbs became more and more generalized over time, and by the Qin-Han period, some of these words began to appear at the C position in a new syntactic structure, namely V(O)-C. During the Wei-Jin and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, this new structure flourished and more verbs could occur at the C position. It was during the Sui-Tang period that the liao started to emerge in the V(O)-C construction. By the end of the Tang Dynasty, the V-liao-(O) emerged.;Having studied the historical semantic generalization and syntactic development of these words, I conclude that the more grammaticalized an item is, the further to the right its position is in the linear order of a sentence. The evolvement from yi-NP to yi-V(O) indicates the first step of grammaticalization of the word yi. Later, from yi-V(O) to V(O)-yi, the yi is even more grammaticalized. Similar to the yi, the evolution of the bi-V(O) to V(O)-bi; jing-V(O) to V(O)- jing; NP-qi to V(O)-qi; liao-(O) to V(O)-liao and (NP)-que-(O) to (NP)-V- que-(O) all followed the same route of grammaticalization.