Semantic Constraints On The Grammaticalization Of Chinese Demonstratives

Guided by Diessel‘s theory of the grammaticalization of demonstratives in a typological perspective,the present dissertation tries to explore rules and constraints on semantic evolution of demonstratives by a detailed diachronic description of their grammaticalization in Chinese in the framework of grammaticalization,especially in the notion of Himmelman‘s(2004)and Traugott‘s(2014)context-based theory.Across languages,demonstratives typically comprise a closed grammatical system with only a few linguistic items.However,they do not only play a fundamental role in the referential system of language,but also provide a frequent source for a wide range of other grammatical markers as well,such as definite articles,third person pronouns,focus markers,complementizers,etc.Grammaticalization is defined as the process in which lexical items develop into grammatical items and less grammatical items into more grammatical items.In this process,new grammatical structures and functional items emerge.The semantic evolution of lexical words may involve metaphorical extension,pragmatic inference,analogy,harmony and context absorption.As a class of words with strong context-sensitive features,demonstratives,starting from functional words,grammaticalize into a new category of functional words.This process must be different from the lexical words because their source items have different properties and functions.Therefore,the semantic features and functions of demonstratives,and their evolution rules and mechanisms are the focus of the present study.The research items are chosen based on Diessel‘s theory(1999a)of paths of evolution,which is based on the syntactic distribution and category of demonstratives,namely,pronominal,adnominal,identificational and adverbial demonstratives.Chinese demonstratives undergo grammaticalization on the first three of these paths.The present study reviews the development of relative markers,the definite articles and copulas as the target items,after a detailed study of systems of Chinese demonstratives in different historical stages and their grammaticalization.The research,firstly,extracts semantic properties of demonstratives from the study of their basic functions,usages and semantic features,and finds that definiteness and identification are semantic constants.Then,these properties are traced through the different stages of evolution,with the aim of finding out how they are encoded.Finally,we study mechanisms of semantic change,and explore the semantic properties and features of the target items in the synchronic dimension.The diachronic analysis focuses on how definiteness and the identification of demonstratives are encoded in the grammatical structure at different historical stages of the language.The language samples used in the research ranges from oracles and inscriptions in ancient times to literary works in the contemporary age,covering a span of nearly four thousand years.Dozens of works have been analyzed exhaustively and language data are classified,summarized and counted.Samples in excavated documents have been taken from authoritative sources,while those in handed-down documents have been taken from the Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU online(CCL).Several hybrid research methods are employed in the study,including description and interpretation,synchronic comparison and diachronic comparison,as well as quantitative sampling and statistical inference.Based on this research,the present study has the following findings:(1)the process from the source item “zhe”(?)to the relative marker “zhe”(?)reveals that head nouns and relative markers are dependent and conditioned upon each other,and also show a continuum in definiteness from headless relative clause to a headed one.To be more precise,if the former has strong features of definiteness and identification,the latter will be weak,and/or vice versa;(2)The decline and fall of “zhe”(?)is closely related to the topic,focus and the sentence weight;(3)Definite articles encode definiteness and specifications.The evolutionary process is actually an evolution from pragmatic definiteness to semantic definiteness;(4)The grammaticalization of Chinese copular “shi”(?)is influenced by topicalization,and it involves the process of transferring deictic and definite elements to the topic.The above target items have similar features in the semantic evolution.All of them undergo semantic reduction and loss,and are influenced by resumptive construction and topicalization,which can be summarized as follows:(1)In the evolutionary process,the source items,firstly,lose the extrophoric deictic function,showing deictic neutrality and becoming completely non-deictic in exophoric and endophoric situations;(2)Resumptive constructions are a means to empty the semantic contents of source items,and are related with co-referential NP,antecedents or the subject-predicate construction closely to result in a clear referential system and the compactness of sentence structure;(3)Semantic bleaching of source items is accompanied with topicalization.The motive for grammaticalization is the need for definiteness and identification of the topic itself,therefore,the definiteness constrains the evolutionary process;(4)The above mentioned mechanism of grammaticalization of lexical words occur at different stages,but definiteness and identification are more important in the evolution of demonstratives.These findings show that grammar and semantics are conditioned mutually by definiteness and identification in resumptive constructions and topicalization in the grammaticalization of demonstratives.The process,by nature,is the reconfiguration of form and meaning,and its terminal aim is to reestablish the referential system of language.Thus,the following are the main contributions of the present research:(1)sorting out and describing the grammaticalization process of Chinese relative markers,the copula and definite articles in detail,and further giving evidence or solutions for a number of controversial problems;(2)finding the semantic constrains on semantic evolution of Chinese demonstratives;(3)applying the referential theory in the philosophy of language to the specific language analysis and authenticating each other mutually;(4)showing that,in this case,the grammaticalization of demonstratives is guided by purely internal linguistic factors.