Research On The Grammaticalization Of Chinese Short-term Temporal Adverb "lìjí","lìmǎ", And "lìkè"

This thesis explored the grammaticalization of “Lì jí”,“Lì kè”, and “Lì mǎ” fromthe diachronic perspective. We first illustrated the evolution and formation processesof the selected words. Through the investigation of the ancient literature, the authorfound that temporal adverb “Lì jí” and “Lì kè” did not exist in the Antiquity Times:“Lì jí” was formed when “Lì” and “Jí” grammaticalized into temporal adverbsrespectively, and combined by the effect of reanalysis;“Lì mǎ” was originally used asa verb-object construction in the Chunqiu Period, indicating the action of drawing ahorse to stop. In the Sui and Tang Dynasty, under the effect of reanalysis, theboundary of “Lì” and “Mǎ” disappeared, and it began to function as a fixed phraseand co-occur with other verbs. Then, it gradually lost its syntactic autonomy andbegan to modify other verbs. Based on its syntactic position and semantic inference,“Lì Mǎ” turned into a temporal adverb in modern times;“Kè” was originally used as averb with the meaning of engraving. Until the West Zhou Dynasty, people classified awhole day into one hundred units of “Kè”. During the Han Dynasty,“Kè” alwayscombined with number to indicate the exact time of day, such as “Shí kè (十刻)”,“Wǚ kè (五刻)”. When it came to the Jin Dynasty,“Kè” began to co-occur withcharacters such as “Guǐ(晷)” or “Qǐng (顷)”, denoting very short moment of time. Bythe effect of analogy, temporal adverb “Lìkè” formed in the Ming Dynasty.The author also summarized the differences and similarities of their developingprocesses and explained these phenomena with grammaticalization theory. Throughthis investigation, we can find that, all of them have experienced the stage ofco-ocurring with other verbs before they became temporal adverbs. During theirdevelopment process, metaphor plays a very important role in their semanticextension, and reanalysis triggers the change of their syntactic position, and analogycontributes to the generalization of a new form with a new meaning or a new syntacticfunction.