The emergence of disjunction: A history of constructionalization in Chinese

Abstract

This study investigates the diachronic development of Chinese disjunction, drawing implications both for principles of diachronic Construction Grammar, and for the linguistic typology of disjunction. Close examinations of data from historical corpora revealed non-linear, gradual constructional changes based on complex yet principled interactions of conceptual origin, constructional patterning, discourse pragmatics, and an isolating typology in the development of Chinese disjunction. Specifically, the results (1) show that construction is the source, unit and product of change, (2) demonstrate the pivotal role of syntactic and semantic reanalysis in the micro changes leading to the constructionalization of disjunction, (3) reveal a conceptual and diachronic continuity between epistemic uncertainty and disjunction, (4) highlight frequency of use as a driving force in the conventionalization and entrenchment of constructional schema, and (5) confirm the role played by an isolating typology in syntactic and categorial reassignment as a key step in grammatical constructionalization.

An evolutionary approach to semasiological change: Overt influence attempts through the development of the Mandarin 吧-ba particle

“…To compute the relative frequencies of the 4 different 吧 ba-CAPs (see table1), I adopted a similar methodology as the one proposed in Jing- Schmid & Peng (2016) The list of all texts included in both the diachronic and synchronic sections of the CCL can be retrieved from the following website: http://ccl.pku.edu.cn:8080/ccl_corpus/corpus_info.pdf. (last accessed 27/07/2017).…”

Event integration as a driving force of language change: evidence from Chinese 使-shǐ-make

“…Given the wide temporal span and the large amount of data, periodization is methodologically desirable. In this study, we followed Jing-Schmidt and Peng (2016) in periodization and divided Chinese into five periods: Archaic Chinese (1100 BCE–25 CE), Medieval Chinese (25 CE–907 CE), Early Mandarin (907 CE–1644 CE), Early Modern Chinese (1644 CE–1920s), and Modern Chinese (1940s–present). A preliminary inspection of the data revealed that the tokens of SHI increased much more rapidly from the early years of the 20th century, compared to that in preceding periods.…”

Paths of Constructionalization in Peninsular Spanish: The Development of “Pues Eso”. A 20th Century Case

“…In this paper, we adopt an analysis model based on the [F] (form) and [M] (meaning) correlation from Croft's 2001 model (Traugott and Trousdale 2013, p. 8;Zhuo and Peng 2016; see also Traugott 2022). Considering the orality of PE, although the total amount of data retrieved may seem small in specific timespans, it allows for the recreation of the change pattern developed by PE to serve as the basis for future research.…”