| The goal of this dissertation is to study grammaticalization of verbs participating in different types of serial verb constructions in Chinese. The term serial verb construction (SVC) refers to a construction in which more than one verb occurs with only one sentential subject, and these verbs are not connected by conjunctions or overtly marked subordination. Grammaticalization is defined as a diachronic concept referring to a kind of historical semantic process whereby a root morpheme with a full lexical meaning assumes a more abstract, functional, or grammatical meaning (Matisoff 1991:383). Grammaticalization can be interpreted from both historical and synchronic perspectives. The study of grammaticalization from the historical perspective is to investigate the sources of grammatical forms and the typical pathways of change that affect them. From the synchronic perspective, grammaticalization is viewed as primarily a syntactic, discourse pragmatic phenomenon studied from the viewpoint of the fluid patterns of language use (Hopper and Traugott 1994:2).;The Chinese dialects I will discuss include: Taiwan Mandarin, Taiwanese---a southern Min dialect spoken in Taiwan---Hakka, and Cantonese. A number of verbs in different types of serial verb constructions will be examined. For instrumental take serial verb constructions, I will discuss ba and jiang as instrumental verbs in classical Chinese and as object markers in Modern Mandarin. As for recipient/benefactive give serial verb constructions, I will analyze Modern Mandarin gei 'give', Taiwanese ho 'give', Hakka pun 'give' and yu 'give, relate, refer, resemble' in Archaic Chinese. For factive/complementizer say serial verb constructions, I will examine Modern Mandarin shuo 'say', Taiwanese kong 'say' and Cantonese wa 'say' as well as yan 'say', yue 'say', dao 'say' and shuo 'say' in classical Chinese. In the last chapter, a comparative study of resultative verb compounds in Modern Mandarin and their counterparts in Taiwanese will be provided.;At the end of each chapter, parallels in other languages (i.e. Japanese, Korean, Russian and some from Creole and West African languages) will be demonstrated. |
