A Research On "Zhu" And Its Relational Isues In Medieval Chinese

The article primarily studies the grammaticalization of durative particle "zhu" and its relational issues in medieval Chinese. Taking the medieval Chinese as the core, in pre-Qin and Western Han dynasty, three kinds of usage of "zhu" are defined. In sub-phrases of medieval Chinese, their syntactic performance are discussed and compared with each other. And then, we'll explain the emerge of durative particle "zhu" referring to modern Chinese.In this article, we primarily discuss two issues:Firstly, the source of durative particle "zhu" emerged in modern Chinese. According to the description of "zhu" in pre-Qin dynasty, we take "zhu1"(means "adhere to"), "zhu2"(means "touch"), "zhu3" (means "move sth. to somenplace") as the object of our study. After collecting and analyzing their information show in syntactic performance, we consider "zhu2", "zhu3" as the source of durative particle "zhu", not "zhu1".Secondly, the motivation of grammaticalization of "zhu2" and "zhu3". They both have undergone the grammaticalization in serial-verb construction, and the analogy made them associated with more kinds of verbs to form a Construction, in which they have undergone reduction and ultimately both became resultative complements that adhere to a verb.When it is a durative verb, the resultative complement is prone to be a durative particle. This is consistent with the hypothesis of unidirectionality. After a long and complex process, it should be noted that the causative feature of "zhu3" have gradually weakened and ultimately are lost.