The diachronic evolution of directional constructions in Mandarin

Abstract

This thesis investigates the diachronic evolution of directional constructions found in Mandarin and other modern varieties of Chinese. What I call directional constructions are usually called 'directional complements' in most work on Chinese grammar. They consist of a series of particles and their associated syntactic constructions. The particles follow after verbs and typically indicate a direction of motion associated with the event expressed by a verb. For example, in the sentence 'ta zouchulai' 'He walks out hither', the verb 'zou' 'walk' expresses the action of walking and the directional particle 'chulai' indicates that the action is performed going from inside to outside and in the direction of the speaker. Directional particles can also have a variety of abstract senses that are derived from their basic directional senses through metaphor. I trace the diachronic evolution of the directional particles and their associated syntactic constructions from their origins as independent verbs in various syntactic constructions in pre-Qin varieties of Chinese up to their present state in Modern Mandarin. I identify the various formal and functional properties of the constructions at each stage in the history of the language and show how these properties change from one stage to another. I also investigate the factors that condition these changes. My research is based on a corpus of vernacular texts that cover each period in the development of the constructions from pre-Qin times up to the present. I present my analysis of each stage in the development of the constructions within the Construction Grammar framework.