| Embedded within the framework of variationist sociolinguistics and thecomparative method of historical linguistics, the present study is concerned about theissue of the diachronic change and synchronic variation of the patterning anddistribution of both marked/explicit and unmarked/implicit adversative conjunctions inMandarin Chinese (MC). It also examines the syntactic, semantic, and pragmaticfeatures of the adversative conjunctions in MC, as well as the factors that contribute tothe preference of marked over unmarked adversative conjunctions in MC. In addition,it investigates the possibility of English influence upon Chinese with recourse to thehard test of contact-induced language change and variation outlined by Poplack andLevey (2010). The findings of the study, carried out from5,498marked and unmarkedadversative concordances of three comparable MC corpora, the Hongloumeng corpus,and the self-constructed modern Chinese corpus and translated Chinese corpus, revealthat among the adversative conjunctions in MC,但是danshi but‘is the one thatoccurs the most frequently across the three corpora. In comparing the use ofadversative constructions of three different MC texts, an array of differences wasdiscovered. First the ratio of marked and unmarked adversative constructions variessignificantly in modern MC from the early modern MC when there was little contactwith the English language. Contact-induced language change and variation manifestsitself not only in terms of marginal frequencies, but also the constraints that give riseto the variable use of language forms. The constraining patterns of different linguisticvariables upon the variability of adversative conjunctions also underwent significantchanges in modern MC, compared with the early modern MC. The study suggests thatalongside with the internal language change, English, as a major catalyst, hasfacilitated the extensive and explicit use of adversative conjunctions in MC. |
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