Diachrony and Typology in Chinese Grammar

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Diachrony and Typologyin Chinese Grammar

• Alain PEYRAUBE ???
• CNRS EHESS
• New Directions in Historical Linguistics
• ESF-OMLL Workshop
• Lyon, France, 12-14 May 2008

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Diachronic Syntax (1)

• Evolution of grammatical forms throughout history
• Three mechanisms of grammatical change
• - Analogy, comprising
• Degrammaticalization (typically Lexicalization)
• - Reanalysis, comprising
• Grammaticalization
• Exaptation
• - External Borrowing

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Diachronic Syntax (2)

• Motivating factors of syntactic change
• Semantic-pragmatic change, especially
• Pragmatic inferencing (metonymization, more
  related to reanalysis)
• Metaphorical extension (more related to analogy)
• Subjectification
• Others, such as phonological change
• The main motivation for external borrowing is
  language contact

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Diachrony / Typology

• None of these diachronic mechanisms and/or
  motivations involve typological research strictly
  defined to any extent, except perhaps external
  borrowing.

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Typology

• Identify structural properties that different
  languages share (universals), as well as the
  significant properties which distinguish one from
  another
• Consequence by extension  a principle way of
  classifying the languages of the world  (Hagège
  1992)

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What connects the two domains?

• Simply the fact that diachronic linguistics often
  enables us to provide grounded hypotheses about
  the common properties which Sinitic languages
  share, or more often, the basic differences which
  are revealed between them.
•  Examples passives and causatives postverbal
  adverbs ditransitive constructions verbs of
  saying

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Passives and causatives (1)

• In many contemporary Sinitic languages, verbs of
  giving are the main source for passive markers.
• Verbs of giving which develop into passive
  markers might even be a characteristic shared
  with certain languages in East and Southeast Asia
  from different families (Austro-Asiatic and
  Tibeto-Burman languages).
• The development of verbs of giving into passive
  markers is typologically atypical. It is not
  attested crosslinguistically. See Heine and
  Kuteva (2002).

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Passives and causatives (2)

• Shared passive and causative morphology is
  certainly not uncommon but the source of the
  exponents is not a verb of giving (Comrie and
  Polinsky 1993).
• Chappell Peyraube (2006) all passive markers
  having their source in verbs of giving have an
  intermediate stage of a causative verb (see also
  Jiang Shaoyu 2002, Hong and Zhao forthcoming)
• V give gt V causative gt passive marker

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Passives and causatives (3)

• Proposal of an implicational universal
• If a language has a passive marker whose origin
  is a verb of giving, then it necessarily has a
  causative verb realised by the same form and
  having its source in a verb of giving.
• GIVE gt PASSIVE MARKER ? GIVE gt CAUSATIVE

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Passives and causatives (4)

• Hypothesis grounded on historical data all
  passive markers (originating from a verb of
  giving) used today in Sinitic languages have been
  first used as causative verbs in Medieval or
  Modern Chinese
• Yu ? to give, which is probably the first to
  have been used as a passive marker (Feng 2000 
  638) zháo/zhuó ?(?)to place, to use, then to
  give, qi ? to give, begins to be used as a
  causative verb in Early Modern Mandarin, gei ?
  (18th century, see Jiang L. 2000 226).

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Passives and causatives (5)

• Examples
• With the verb qi ? to give
• ? ? ???????
• qi wo huáng le, tui mén tui bù kai
• caus 1sg frighten pfv push door push neg open
• (It) made me so frightened (that I) could not
  open the door. (Jin Píng Méi Cíhuà ? ? ? ? ?,
  16th c.)

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Passives and causatives (6)

• With the verb zhuó? to give
• In the Lao Qi Dà ??? (14th c.), 51 of the verbal
  zhuó are causatives with the meaning of to ask,
  to tell somebody to do something
• ????? ????
• wo zhuó haízimen zuò yu ni chi
• 1SG CAUS children do give 2SG eat
• Ill get my children to make you something to
  eat.(Lao Qi Dà Yánjie ?????)

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Postverbal adverbs (1)

• Postverbal adverbs in Cantonese sin first,
  jyuh for the moment, gwo again, tim also,
  more, maaih also, more, again, saai all,
  completely, jaih too
• Ngoh heui sin
• I go first
• Maih yuk jyuh
• Dont move now!
• Pin mahnjeung se hou saai la
• CL article write finish completely part.
• The article is completely written

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Postverbal adverbs (2)

• Postverbal adverbs never existed at any stage in
  the history of Chinese. Adverbs have always been
  preverbal, in Archaic, Medieval, as well as in
  Modern Chinese gt impossible to propose any
  hypothesis of internal change
• Only remaining possible hypothesis external
  borrowing

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Postverbal adverbs (3)

• Postverbal adverbs in Kam-Tai languages
• ha35 so24 an24 tem35
• give two CL again
• Give me two more (Zhuang, a Tai language, Li
  1990)
• tap7 kon5
• Jump first (Sui, a Kam-Sui language, Zhang 1980)

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Postverbal adverbs (4)

• Postverbal adverbs in Miao-Yao languages
• ken55 va44
• Cry a lot (Miao, Qiandong language, Wang 1985)
• kau2 mu4 te2
• you go first (Yao, Bunu language, Mao 1982)

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Postverbal adverbs (5)

• Two competing hypotheses
• Kam-Tai and/or Miao-Yao languages might have
  borrowed their postverbal adverbs from Cantonese
  gt the origin of Cantonese postverbal adverbs
  remains unexplained
• Cantonese might have borrowed postverbal adverbs
  from Kam-Tai or Miao-Yao (or more probably from
  Yao, see Dai 1992)

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Ditransitive constructions (1)

• In Standard Chinese (Mandarin), the word order of
  ditransitive constructions is V IO DO
• Wo gei ni yiben shu
• I give you oneCl. Book
• I give you one book
• In some Southern Sinitic languages (Cantonese)
  reverse order
• Ngoh bei yatbun syu neih
• I give one book you

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Ditransitive constructions (2)

• Two possible historical explanations
• External Borrowing Hypothesis
• The VDOIO construction has been borrowed from
  non-Sinitic languages (Tai-Kadai, Austroasiatic)
  with which Cantonese and other Southern Sinitic
  languages have been in contact (Hashimoto 1976,
  Peyraube 1981)
• Derivation through Internal Development
• V IO DO gt V DO IO or
• V DO Prep. IO gt V DO IO

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Ditransitive constructions (3)

• Xu and Peyraube (1997) have shown that the
  deletion of the dative preposition is probably
  the correct hypothesis
• Contra the External Borrowing Hypothesis
• Other non-Cantonese dialects have V DOIO and
  were probably not in contact with any Tai
  languages, eg Hubei dialects of Enshi, Badong,
  Dangyang, Jingmen, Jiangling, Anhui dialects of
  Tongcheng, Anqing, Wuhu

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Ditransitive constructions (4)

• In Ancient Thai (13th c.) V DO Prep.IO
• Not a single piece of evidence to show that the
  DO could have moved backward across the IO or the
  IO could have moved forward acroos the DO
• Almost any verb that can appear in VDOPrep.IO
  can also appear in VDOIO
• A pause often occurs between the DO and the IO

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Ditransitive constructions (5)

• Case of a structure unknown in Standard Chinese
  (Mandarin, Northern Chinese) and rare in Archaic,
  Medieval and Modern Chinese
• Not borrowed from non-Sinitic languages, but is
  internally derived

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Verbs of saying (1)

• grammaticalization of say verbs gt complementizers
  - well-known for African and Southeast Asian
  languages (Heine and Kuteva 2002)
• not very well-attested in the study of the
  Sinitic or Chinese languages
• S - V1 - V2say Oclause gt S - V1- Comp. Oclause

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Verbs of saying (2)

• Colloquial Beijing dialect
• ????,???????????????, .
• You hen duo ren, tamen jiu renwei shuo zhe dei
  zhengfu gei women jiejue
• therebe very many people 3PL then think saycomp
  this must government for 1PL resolve
• Lots of people, they think that this has to
  resolved for us by the government. (oral
  corpus)

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Verbs of saying (3)

• Pre-Archaic and Early Archaic
• ? yan, ? yun, ? yue (already in Oracle bone
  inscriptions), ? yu (in Bronze inscriptions) 4
  verbs of saying
• Late Archaic? wei, ? shuo, ? dao
• Shuo and dao very rare with the meaning of to
  say. Shuo to explain, dao to discuss

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Verbs of saying (4)

• A good scenario for the grammaticalization of
  verbs say gt Complementizers (Chappell, Li
  Ming and Peyraube, forthc.)
• Several verbs say have acquired the meaning
  of  think  (?? yiwei). Among them
• ? yan, under the Six Dynasties (ca. 5th c. AD)
• ? yun, under the Six Dynasties
• ? dao, in Pre-Modern (ca. 14th c. AD)
• Semantic change say gt  to consider  gt
   to think 

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Verbs of saying (5)

• The complementizer does not come directly from a
  verb say, but from a cognitive verb meaning
   to think ,  to believe 
• Semantic change as follows
• SAY gt CONSIDER gt THINK gt COMPLEMENTIZER
• This last development is part of a
  grammaticalization process which did not take
  place before 17th or 18th century.

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References (1)

• Chappell H. A. Peyraube. 2006. The Analytic
  Causatives of Early Modern Southern Min in
  Diachronic Perspective. D.-A. Ho, H.S. Cheung, W.
  Pan, F. Wu eds. Linguistic studies in Chinese
  and neighboring languages. Taiwan Academia
  Sinica, Institute of Linguistics. 973-1012.
• Chappell H., Li M. A. Peyraube. Forthcoming.
  Polygrammaticalization of say verbs in Sinitic
  languages.
• Comrie B. M. Polinsky (eds.) 1993. Causatives
  and transitivity. Amsterdam John Benjamins.
• Dai Q. et al. 1992. Introduction to contacts
  between Chinese and minorities languages.
  Zhongyuan minzu xueyuan. in Chinese
• Feng C. 2000. Grammr of Chinese of the modern
  period. Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe. in Chinese

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References (2)

• Hagège C. 1992. Morphological Typology. Oxford
  Int. Encycl. of Linguistics. OUP.
• Hashimoto M. 1976. The double object construction
  in Chinese. Computational Analyses of Asia and
  African Languages 6. 31-42.
• Heine, B. T. Kuteva. 2005. Language contact and
  grammatical change. Cambridge Cambridge
  University Press.
• Hong B. Zhao M. Forthcoming. On verbs of giving
  developing into causative verbs and causative
  verbs developing into passive prepositions. in
  Chinese
• Jiang L. 2000. Discussion on the common use of
  causatives and passives in Chinese. Outline of
  Modern Chinese. Beijing Shangwu yinshuguan.
  221-236. in Chinese

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References (3)

• Jiang S. 2002. Origin of the passive markers
  gei and jiao. Yuyanxue luncong 26. 159-177.
  in Chinese
• Li J. 1990. Cantonese is different from other
  types of Chinese. Yuyan jianshe tongxun 27.
  28-48. in Chinese
• Mao Z. 1982. Monograph of the Yao languages.
  Beijing Minzu chubanshe. in Chinese
• Peyraube A. 1981.The Dative Construction in
  Cantonese. Computational Analyses on Asian and
  African Languages 16. 29-66
• Wang F. 1985. Monograph of the Miao languages.
  Beijing Minzu chubanshe. in Chinese
• Xu L. A. Peyraube.1997. On the Double-Object
  Construction and the Oblique Construction in
  Cantonese. Studies in Language 21-1. 105-127.
• Zhang J. 1980. Monograph of Sui language.
  Beijing Minzu chubanshe. in Chinese