A Study On Grammaticalization Of Accordance Preposition In Chinese

Origin and evolution of preposition is an important aspect of preposition study. Astudy on a subclass of prepositions, concerning the motivation and mechanism of theirgrammaticalization, can bring broadened inspiration than the previous studies focusingon single prepositions. In modern Chinese, accordance preposition is an importantgrammatical category, without through study. Accordance preposition can be classifiedinto two groups according to whether or not the introducing factor being “principle”,“law”,“institution”, and whether or not the sense of accordance being its commonsememe. Thus, two groups are differentiated: I. typical accordance preposition, such asLun(论), Yi(依), Ju(据), An(按), Zhao(照); II. untypical accordance preposition, suchas Ping(凭),Cong(从), Sui(随), Yin(因), Yi(以).The development of these two groups of accordance prepositions has followingfeatures.1. Different emergence time. Yi(以), Yin(因), Lun2(论2) emerged duringXianqin; Yi(依), Ju(据), An(按), Cong(从), Sui(随), emerged during Han Dynasty;Ping(凭), Lun1(论1), Zhao(照) emerged after Tang Dynasty.2. Different frequency ofappearing. An(按), Ping(凭), Yin(因), Cong(从) were less used, possibly due to thecompetition among the semantic system in and out of the groups.3. Mutual influenceon usage. The most obvious example is the emergence of preposition frames as “据/从/依/照/以……(来)说看看来”; Lun2(论2) and Ping(凭) formed duiwen and influencedeach other; and the duiwen between Ju(据) and Lun2(论2) also gave Ju(据) themeaning of “expounding based on some aspect”.The origin and evolution of typical accordance preposition and untypicalaccordance preposition are both consistent and different.The consistency is as follows.1. All accordance prepositions except Lun2(论2)were originated from serial verb construction. The declining tendency of conjunctionin serial verb construction from Xianqin to Wei-jin and Nan-bei dynasties also served as syntactic conditions for the emergence of accordance preposition.2. All accordanceprepositions except Zhao(照) underwent the semantic abstraction.3. All accordanceprepositions underwent the process from obscure grammatical category toclear-defined prepositions.4. All the object type expansions were from nouns tonominal phrases to verbs or clauses, and mostly in the last stage to preposition frame.5.the senses of objects of some typical accordance prepositions underwent a shift fromabstract and unanimated to concrete and animated concept, i.e. from abstract nouns topersonal nouns or pronouns.The differences are as follows. Typical accordance prepositions turned moretypical with the expansion of their objects. The expansion was not that obvious for theuntypical accordance prepositions, and writtenization gradually took place exceptPing(凭) and Cong(从).The conditions for grammaticalization of accordance preposition were syntacticstructure, semantic abstraction and the expansion of object of the original word andappearing frequency. Through the analysis of Yi(倚), Liang(量), Kao(考), which arechosen from the same semantic field, it is found that the expanding degree of object ofthe original word was a key factor for grammaticalization, under suitable syntacticconditions. Semantic abstraction was only a side-phenomenon in the process of objectexpansion during grammaticalization. According to Peng Rui’s “critical frequency”hypothesis, a comparison of “general frequency” and “critical frequency” during thegrammaticalization of accordance prepositions shows that the influence of “criticalfrequency” was not critical; and also,“general frequency” was not directly connectedwith the grammaticalization of accordance prepositions. Thus, frequency played adispensable role in this grammaticalization process.The mechanism of the grammaticalization of accordance prepositions isreanalysis, metaphor, pragmatic inference and synchronous extension.